A cursory reading of this blog hopefully reveals that I admire people with the courage to do what they believe is the right thing, even if it means risking their careers and reputations. The major U.S. media was once dominated and controlled by like-minded journalists who took pride in comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable, but the industry has been overtaken by fame and glory seekers like the Washington Post’s Taylor Lorenz, who views journalism as a promotional tool for her personal “brand.” So far, Lorenz’s brand building has been at the expense of the Washington Post.
My fondness for the defiant is particularly acute for physicians and nurses who refuse to look away or remain silent about pervasive and growing wrongdoing in healthcare, an industry overrun with hospital suits, private equity charlatans, and conflicted insurance companies who desperately try to avoid paying for the services they charge a pretty penny to cover. And, of course, the pandemic has resulted in disturbing Biden Administration political interference.
That’s why I took great pride in writing about Mary Talley Bowden and Peter McCullough, the Texas physicians who questioned the government’s Covid protocols; Marion Gruber and Phil Krause, the FDA’s top vaccine experts who quit their jobs rather than be bullied into rubber stamping the Biden Administration’s initiatives; Marion Mass and Nikki Johnson, pediatricians who routinely speak out against the healthcare cartel; and the dozens of doctors and nurses at Michigan’s Beaumont Health who helped me expose some horrific mishaps while the once prestigious hospital network was driven into the ground by a ne’er-do-well CEO and his board of ostriches.
My dream publication
If I could raise the funds, my dream is to start a publication called Healthcare Hero Digest, which would provide national coverage for physicians and nurses taking on the medical establishment. There’s no shortage of material. As I took a break from writing this post, I came across this article about Charles Mehlman, a surgeon who’s filed a lawsuit against Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center alleging he was retaliated against for raising concerns about another surgeon generating millions for the hospital allegedly performing dangerous and unnecessary surgeries.
Of course, those serving in the armed services, municipal law enforcement, and the fire department rank high among my heroes. I’m sure the FBI still has some decent and honorable persons, but even before the agency’s raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Logo home I was distrustful of its current and past leadership.
Not surprisingly, Frank Figliuzzi, a former senior FBI director accused of lying by his subordinates, is a regular talking head on NBC and its sister cable outlets.
Confidential informant
In recent weeks I’ve come to appreciate the legions of heroes who protect America but whose identifies aren’t publicly known. One of them is the undercover informant who derailed a plan by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards to assassinate John Bolton, a former national security adviser to President Donald Trump, to avenge the killing of a senior Iranian official.
As reported by the New York Times, the plot was foiled by a confidential federal informant who posed as a would-be assassin. Court documents revealed that Iran’s revolutionary guards had detailed knowledge of Bolton’s movements that weren’t publicly available. The story has the makings of a “Revenge of Tehran” thriller that could fill the entertainment void I’m experiencing after watching the Apple TV series Tehran about a Mossad hacker-agent who infiltrates Tehran under a false identity to help destroy Iran’s nuclear reactor. Tehran is easily one of the best and most intense television programs I’ve ever watched.
Fed economist
Another unidentified hero was revealed in this Wall Street Journal story about China’s attempts to infiltrate the Federal Reserve system and bribe and coerce informants to provide sensitive economic data. An investigation and report by Republican staff members of the Senate’s Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs uncovered this incident as reported on July 26, 2022, by the Journal:
The most extreme example cited in the report involved the Fed economist who traveled to Shanghai in 2019 after the U.S. and China had levied tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of goods. Chinese officials detained the economist on four occasions during the trip, the report said.
The economist later reported to the bank that Chinese officials initially approached him at his hotel room, “making the atmosphere frightening,” and told him that they had been monitoring his phone conversations, including those involving a previous divorce, the report said.
The Chinese officials told the Fed employee that he must “share sensitive, nonpublic economic data to which he has access” and that he must “advise senior [Chinese] government officials on sensitive economic issues, including trade tariffs” and confidential information, according to the report. The officials also threatened to imprison him and destroy his life if he didn’t sign a letter promising not to mention the encounters to his family, the report said.
It must be frightening to be an American in China when some government goons show up at your hotel room and make threatening overtures. I’m not an expert on Chinese espionage, but I know that gaining possibly embarrassing personal information on a desired informant and threatening to make it public is one of their signature spy recruitment tools. America is fortunate that the targeted economist refused to acquiesce to China’s intimidation.
Watchdogs who don’t bark
It would behoove the legacy media to prominently feature unsung heroes, but sadly the legacy media and their social media enablers too often serve as arms of the Establishment, not the public’s watchdog.
Mary Talley Bowden, the Stanford-trained ENT doc, learned that she was supposedly getting suspended from Houston Methodist by a local reporter before she received any notification from the hospital. Bowden has been routinely trashed by the local Houston media and recently was banned from Twitter. A defamation lawsuit Bowden filed revealed she is uncomfortable going out in public and fears for her three young boys.
The Washington Free Beacon reported last month the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention coordinated with social media companies and Google to censor users who expressed skepticism or criticism of COVID-19 vaccines. The story was based on a trove of internal communications the publication obtained.
Attorneys General Lawsuit
A lawsuit was was filed in May by Missouri’s and Louisiana’s attorney generals against President Biden and other top-ranking government officials for allegedly working with social media giants such as Meta, Twitter, and YouTube to censor and suppress free speech, including truthful information, related to COVID-19, election integrity, and other topics, under the guise of combating “misinformation.”
I seem to be in the minority in my belief the lawsuit allegations are a very big deal. If the case goes to trial, the Biden Administration will quickly learn why Missouri calls itself, “The Show Me State.”
I miss the days when most journalists fashioned themselves as Missourians. Taylor Lorenz, the Washington Post brand builder, hails from Connecticut.