Horowitz: Iowa conservatives introduce gold standard bill to fight the dangerous COVID mandate



There is nothing free-market about "private" businesses joining in the violation of the Nuremberg Code. In fact, the entire concept of a rushed therapeutic that wanes quickly and causes a shocking number of known and unknown injuries never would have gotten off the ground under the free market. Socialism, subsidization, monopolization, government using taxpayer funding to create, market, coerce, censor, and reshape society with the shot — all the while being exempt from legal liability — are the only reasons why any business even under 100 employees, much less a larger business, would be mandating it at this point. The only effective, prudent, fair, and free-market position is to use equal and opposing force to restore the balance of the free market. It's show time for the state legislatures.

Legislative bodies throughout the country are meeting over the next few weeks to debate measures that would counter the mandates being illegally promulgated by the Biden administration. Most GOP-controlled states are going to take some form of action, but the question is whether they will take the right action or be intimidated by the visceral response of the big business and health care cartel that has become a giant arm of government tyranny. Several Iowa lawmakers have put together a bill that is the gold standard of what other red states should adopt this coming week.

The crux of the bill, Iowa SF 193, sponsored by Sens. Guth, Johnson, Schultz, Whiting, and Carlin, categorically bans all human rights violations in relation to "Pfizer" government mandates. It prohibits an employer from failing or refusing to hire, discharge, penalize, or otherwise discriminate against an employee with respect to compensation or the terms, conditions, or privileges of employment based on the employee's vaccination history or the refusal of the employee to receive a vaccine or provide proof of immunity. It provides a cause of action in court to anyone discriminated against, along with a prescribed remedy of back pay plus 10% from the employer.

This is what we do in the context of every other form of discrimination, including when employers legitimately terminate problematic workers. So, until we get rid of all those laws and the EEOC at the federal level, we don't need to hear about "the free market."

Next, rather than providing an exception to this rule for hospitals and health care settings, this bill specifically bans any discrimination against health care workers or discrimination on the treatment side for patients in a health care setting. It spells out every form of medical professional, including medical students and residents. Importantly, this bill bars any health care provider licensing authority from denying or revoking a license to any applicant because they decline the shot.

At this point, it is abundantly clear that the shots provide no more protection against transmission than not having the shots, which makes any form of any mandate unjustified, even if we are to believe one can govern another's body. For example, in health care settings, where health organizations are arguing that they must protect cancer patients who didn't get the shot, those patients are at least as likely to get the virus from a supposed vaccinated person as from an unvaccinated person, especially if the latter individual already had the virus. Moreover, research has consistently shown that people within 14 days of the first or second shot are the most vulnerable to catching COVID because of the suboptimal levels of antibodies. Having thousands of health care workers suddenly get the shots within a period of a few weeks would expose those patients to the most risk in health care settings.

Another important provision of the Iowa bill is that it bars all insurance companies from discriminating against those who don't get the shot. This means they cannot reject; deny; limit; cancel; refuse to renew; increase the premiums for; limit the amount, extent, or kind of coverage available to; or otherwise adversely affect eligibility or coverage for the group health policy, contract, or plan for health insurance.

We'd all love to live with a market in which any providers can offer any insurance plan they wish. But that ship sailed with Obamacare. The only things worse than full socialist mandates are half-manipulated mandates, which induce totalitarianism in addition to socialism. Thanks to Obamacare, we cannot start our own insurance companies because of the actuarily insolvent mandates. Yet the same government that pushed universal coverage now gets to manipulate the government-sponsored "private" monopoly companies to bar coverage for large groups of people based on zero scientific evidence. Repeal Obamacare, and then we will remove this provision. Until then, what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Next, the bill bars any owner or manager of a public accommodation from discriminating in services against someone who has not taken the shot. Again, this virus has been used as an excuse to prohibit all landowners from evicting anyone, including those who are disruptive, destructive, and late on rent. We will not allow the socialists to use their control over the "private" sector to suddenly encourage them to discriminate against people with no cause. I'm fine with ending most discrimination laws. But if we are going to have them, the worst outcome is for government to manipulate a perfectly perverse standard of who is subject to them and who is exempt from them. When businesses can deny services or employment to those with HIV or with certain sexual behaviors, or thwart Obamacare, Sarbanes-Oxley, Dodd-Frank, OSHA, and ADA regulations, then come back to me about "the private sector can do what they want."

More provisions of SF 193 include the following:

  • A prohibition on including someone's immunization status on their driver's license.
  • Expansion of the exemption process for vaccine requirements in schools related to existing vaccines.
  • Anyone administering the vaccine must obtain written consent from the patient prior to reporting the administration of the vaccine or immunization to the statewide immunization registry.

At present, all private businesses over 100 employees are on the hook for a looming federal mandate to require a shot that the government has essentially created and manipulated with taxpayer funding that the free market never would have sustained. Both government and the pharmaceutical companies are exempt from liability. This is not free market; this is fascism. As such, for any state to merely pass a neutral law without providing equal and opposing force to prohibit (rather than exempt from) the federal mandate is not an exercise in free market ethos but in submission to totalitarianism.

How come none of these business and health organizations cried bloody murder about "rights of the private sector" when governors placed the ultimate regulation on them – a crippling shutdown or cumbersome capacity mandates? In this case, they are not regulating affirmative expensive compliance measures – just simply a dictate to apply existing discrimination and health privacy law to where it's needed most in order to counter Nuremberg violations by the federal government. Private business owners don't need to lift a finger and spend any time or money on this. Just don't harass your workers. "Well, we're scared of COVID," they are saying. In that case, you have the shot, so what do you care about someone else not getting it?

The private sector or free market did not conjure up the riskiest and leakiest shot in history or mask-wearing; it was all induced by the federal government through fear, intimidation, misinformation, threats, and censorship. In the case of big business and health care, there has been downright collaboration with the federal government at every stage – a violation of the ultimate antitrust principles.

Therefore, every state has an obligation to interpose between the federal coercion and the safety of the people. Allowing every business in every state to remain a conduit for that federal tyranny is not respect for private rights. It's collaboration with a very dark tunnel of tyranny. We don't want to discover what's on the other side.

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Iowa Republicans propose bill to ban the 1619 Project in schools



Iowa Republicans on Tuesday advanced a bill that would cut funding for schools that teach the New York Times' 1619 Project as part of their history curriculum.

The Des Moines Register reported that the legislation, sponsored by Rep. Skyler Wheeler (R) would ban schools, colleges, and regents institutions from teaching the 1619 Project or "any similarly developed curriculum" in U.S. history classes.

The 1619 Project, published in 2019, originally claimed that the "true founding" of the United States occurred when the first African slave ship arrived in Virginia in 1619 and that "anti-black racism runs in the very DNA" of America. Historians have attacked the project for inaccurately reframing American history, calling it "anti-historical," "one-sided," and "wrong." In September 2020, the New York Times stealth-edited its statement describing the 1619 project to remove the controversial claim that 1619 was "our true founding."

Wheeler's bill advanced out of a three-person subcommittee Tuesday with Republican support and will next be considered by the state House Education Committee. According to the Hill, the bill bans schools for using "any United States history curriculum that in whole or in part is derived from a project by the New York Times, known as the '1619 Project,' or any similarly developed curriculum." It also stipulates that school districts that ignore the ban will have their budgets "reduced by one one-hundred-eightieth for each day of the previous budget year for which the school district used school curriculum."

The text of the legislation accuses the 1619 Project of attempting to "deny or obfuscate the fundamental principles upon which the United States was founded."

"The 1619 Project seeks to tear down America, not lift her up," Wheeler said. "It seeks to divide, not unify. It aims to distort facts, not merely teach them. It does so as leftist political propaganda masquerading as history."

The legislation received pushback from Rep. Ras Smith (D).

"I'm the first Smith not born on the same plantation where my father was born, where his mother was born, where his grandmother was born," Smith, who is black, said. "America has that opportunity for diverse thought, rigorous debate, about what it means to be an American."

The 1619 Project's lead author, Nikole Hannah Jones, an Iowa native, also spoke out against the proposed ban, calling it embarrassing for the state.

"The 1619 Project is a work of journalism. It uses historical facts and historiography to illuminate a part of our country and our story that we don't know enough about," Hannah-Jones told the Des Moines Register.

"I don't think those seeking to prohibit the teaching of the 1619 Project have engaged with the project," she said. "I don't think they've read it ... I don't think they've talked to educators about how they're using it in their classrooms."

According to the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, more than 4,500 teachers across the United States have incorporated materials provided by the Center to teach the 1619 Project in schools.