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McCormick Calls for ‘Dramatic Change’ In America’s China Policy

“China poses the gravest threat to our security and our wellbeing since the end of World War II.”

That was David McCormick’s message in a speech Thursday, delivered in the shadow of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall. The Republican U.S. Senate candidate’s foreign policy address made it clear he believes America “is in a contest for our prosperity” against Beijing.

“If we lose, we sacrifice the future long promised to our daughters and their children. The Biden administration is taking us on a dangerous path,” McCormick said. “I am proposing a new one.”

McCormick’s China policy is centered around a series of “dramatic policy changes” he said would slow Communist China’s efforts at expansion. He decried incremental change in U.S.-China policy, arguing for a major overhaul instead.

McCormick called the 4,000 fentanyl overdose deaths in Pennsylvania a tragedy and one that could be stopped if the U.S. and its allies took a tougher stance against China. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, “fentanyl and methamphetamine precursors, opioid additives, and synthetic opioids are manufactured and distributed by China-based chemical companies.”

“We must use sanctions, intelligence resources, military interdictions at seas, and all the tools at our disposal to make it difficult – if not impossible – to produce fentanyl with ingredients originating in China,” McCormick said. To those who might see his policy as too extreme, he added: “I think this fentanyl epidemic is extreme, and it’s time for serious measures to stop it.”

Other proposals include pushing for the removal of China from the World Trade Organization (WTO) and revoking Beijing’s permanent normal trade relations status.

“Going forward, we must chart a new path on trade that focuses on shifting critical supply chains to more reliable trading partners or, even better, bringing them home,” he said. McCormick hopes to keep American farmers protected from any sort of economic coercion from China. “This is a massive project that will require leaders in Washington who understand this challenge.”

McCormick also pushed policies to end U.S. reliance on Chinese-imported lithium batteries and solar panels. Subsidizing green tech dominated by China and its resources “might as well be a direct transfer from Pennsylvanian’s bank accounts to the CCP [Chinese Communist Party],” he said.

He added the U.S. needed to stop trade and investment that supports the CCP’s national security state.

“It’s unconscionable to me to consider the possibility that U.S. dollars would fund a military buildup that could one day be deployed against Pennsylvania’s sons and daughters,” he warned. “We must now presume that Chinese companies seeking U.S. financing or technology will become partners to China’s military and security services.”

McCormick advocated for Congress to aggressively cut off U.S. investment in Chinese technology companies critical to national security. American companies should also be banned from working with the Chinese army, he added. Also important to McCormick is that all public corporations and investment funds reveal Chinese investment in public filings.

Perhaps the most popular proposal involved removing China from the World Health Organization (WHO). Calling it obvious, McCormick said China and the Wuhan Institute of Virology behaved recklessly and refused transparency regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Everyone in this audience was affected by [the pandemic],” he declared after cheers from the crowd. “From those we lost to those who lost their jobs. To years of education that were lost from lockdowns…I won’t have it. I won’t stop until China is removed from the World Health Organization.”

His last proposal involved a ban on strategic purchases of American land by the CCP. McCormick tied the policy to food security in the U.S., saying American farmland was a “strategic asset” that needed protection. He believes any significant purchase of land by Chinese companies or individual should have a national security review.

“Our enemies are at the gate, led by the Chinese Communist Party,” McCormack warned. “As we speak, China is propping up Russia and buying Iranian oil so the jihadist regime in Tehran can fund terrorism against Israel and the United States.”

Before McCormick’s speech, protestors drove a billboard truck through Philadelphia, pointing out that he and Bridgewater Associates, the hedge fund he once ran, did business with China.

McCormick faced the criticism head-on, acknowledging that Bridgewater had investments in China, but dismissed the relevance of the criticism. “These attacks are predictable,” McCormick said. “The real question is who has the will and strength to act.”

Should he win the GOP primary, McCormick would face incumbent Democrat U.S. Sen. Bob Casey next November. McCormick would like Casey to say whether he agrees with McCormick’s China proposals, but he doesn’t expect any answer.

“The senator has proven for two decades he won’t stand firm against the CCP or stand up for a stronger and more resilient America. He has dithered while China moved aggressively. He has failed and should be replaced.”

STUMO: Country-of-Origin Labeling Should be Mandatory for Internet Sales

U.S. consumers assume that the United States always leads the world in safety issues. For example, they expect federal regulations will ensure the trustworthiness of the food and medicines they buy. However, when it comes to the products they purchase online, things are less clear.

Millions of packages are shipped directly to U.S. consumers daily — but few are inspected. When Americans shop online, they frequently have no idea where the products they buy are manufactured. With unsafe imports causing safety issues, it’s time for Congress to mandate “Country of Origin” (COOL) labeling for all internet transactions.

How serious is the problem of unsafe e-commerce? A Wall Street Journal investigation found 10,870 items for sale on Amazon that had been declared unsafe by federal agencies were labeled deceptively, lacked federally required warnings, or were banned by federal regulators. This included many items that big-box retailers would bar from their shelves. Of the 1,934 sellers whose addresses could be determined, 54 percent were based in China.

China has become the epicenter of unsafe e-commerce, with 83 percent of all intellectual property seizures in the United States now originating from the People’s Republic. In fact, China accounts for 40 percent of all Amazon sales, and 75 percent of all new sellers on Amazon are Chinese companies. It’s even estimated that multiple new product listings are uploaded to Amazon from China every second.

Americans already know this is a problem, and polls show they want to buy American-made goods — 40 percent saying they’ll no longer buy anything made in China. They have already seen news stories about unsafe imports — like the Missouri man killed in a motorcycle accident due to a fraudulently labeled helmet bought online or the Georgia family whose home burned down because of a faulty hoverboard bought on Amazon.

Requiring country-of-origin labeling should be a no-brainer. Amazingly, though, some in Congress have blocked efforts to mandate COOL labeling. They appear to be following the whims of importers who claim that COOL labeling would add encumbrances to their business. That’s ludicrous since Amazon sales in Mexico already require this type of country-of-origin information. And Amazon recently started collecting similar information for new postings of products sold in the United States.

A Senate committee recently passed bipartisan legislation requiring clear country-of-origin labeling for all website product descriptions. This is a helpful first step, but the full Senate and the House must also take action.

More and more Americans are shopping online. They want to ensure the medicines, electronics, toys and household items they buy are safe. Country-of-origin labeling for this type of e-commerce would mark an important step toward reclaiming internet shopping safety.

Consumers deserve safe e-commerce. Requiring COOL labeling would be a small price for safe, reliable online shopping. Congress should move quickly to pass bipartisan country-of-origin labeling provisions and ensure that consumers’ lives aren’t put at risk by unsafe imports.

China Using Open-Source Microchip Tech to Threaten US

American politics may be harshly divided along unbendable partisan lines, but one topic brings the two parties together: China.

President Biden’s director of national intelligence, Avril Haines, said China “represents both the leading and most consequential threat to U.S. national security and leadership globally.”

Former president Donald Trump’s national security Adviser John Bolton called China “the existential threat in the 21st century.”

China watchers are now raising the alarm about China’s ability to evade Western sanctions on technology, particularly microchips, and increase its ability to threaten the United States.

National security experts are sounding the alarm about open-source tech, which is rapidly becoming a workaround to sanctions against China’s advanced technology sector. With chips — which are used to power cell phones, automobiles, drones and advanced military tech — the stakes couldn’t be higher.

A computer chip with a history dating to the early 1980s could revolutionize the technological sector. The RISC-V (pronounced “risk five”) is open-source standard technology that “allows anyone to freely develop their own hardware” to run software. Instead of using proven, vetted technology that is not prone to manipulation but is subject to U.S. export controls — such as those developed by Intel, AMD or Arm — open-source technology can be used by anyone, anywhere, with the know-how to do so, opening up a world of potential security risks.

Rick Switzer, a director in the State Department’s Special Envoy for Technology office, warned the next pandemic could involve chips made in China. “The attacks were traced to a cloud service provider for regional banking firms, but outages now appear to be more widespread, covering close to 40 percent of all cloud storage services across the country,” he wrote in “Future Scenario 2028” for Special Competitive Studies Project.

“Government investigators finally discover the issue: a hardware-based on-off switch embedded in a series of voltage-regulating chips. The attackers flipped billions of these switches simultaneously, preventing logic chips from connecting to the storage chips in cloud servers.”

Switzer’s worry is focused on the RISC-V chip model.

Almost six dozen Chinese companies, including companies the U.S. government has placed on the restricted entity list, are involved in the RISC-V alliance.

Chinese chip design firms switched to the technology because of its accessibility and the Chinese government’s push to do so. That includes tech giant Alibaba, which released two RISC-V-based processors. So far, it appears China remains behind the curve on RISC-V. Alibaba’s RISC-V processor can only run simple processes on Android’s O.S. But if U.S. and Chinese companies are allowed to continue sitting side by side in the development of that technology, that soon will change.

“We’re on track to have 62.4 billion RISC-V cores by 2025,” said Calista Redmond, RISC-V International CEO, in 2020. “The market for RISC-V IP and software is expected to grow to over a billion dollars by 2025.”

Not everyone sees that as good news.

“China’s pivot towards open-source chip design demonstrates how difficult it is to implement restrictions on any single type of technology,” said Elaine Dezenski, senior director and dead of the Foundation for Defense of Democracy’s Center of Economic and Financial Power. “On the other hand, export controls, sanctions and related restrictions have tremendous near-term value in protecting U.S. leadership and constraining malign uses of American technology. But the toolkit of U.S. economic statecraft must remain as flexible and nimble as those inevitable attempts to circumvent it.”

Tech commentators believe American corporations will simply follow the profits.

“American companies do business with China for many reasons, but a lot of the time it comes down to money,” said Amy Chang, resident senior fellow in Cybersecurity and Emerging Threats at the R Street Institute on China’s allure to U.S. companies. “Labor and logistics and taxes are cheaper than doing business elsewhere, and because there is a large swath of relatively wealthy middle and upper class in China as prospective consumers.”

Ryan Nabil, director of technology policy at the National Taxpayers Union Foundation, said the interdependence of the American and Chinese economies means more business for everyone.

“Bilateral trade relations continue to be driven largely by the market forces at play in each economy,” Nabil said. “Top U.S. exports to the PRC include soybeans, civilian aircraft, automobiles, corn and coal. Conversely, top imported products from China include machinery and mechanical appliances, furniture, toys and other miscellaneous manufactured items.”

There is disagreement on what the United States can and should do regarding RISC-V and China. Switzer suggested a national security review of open-source hardware in critical infrastructure, import restrictions, and more domestic investment. Nabil wants more transparency and disclosure requirements before determining risks.

He said, “Clearer and evidence-based security standards could be helpful” regarding device security. Nabil added that open-source technology is overall positive because it “makes it easier for more firms, including U.S. and European companies, to enter the global semiconductor markets.”

RISC-V International did not comment on whether there was concern the U.S. government might take steps to make RISC-V adoption harder for companies.

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Forget ‘Made in China.’ America’s Tech Challenge Is ‘Mined in China’

The United States is falling way behind in the global minerals race and the big loser could be the green energy sector, which is heavily reliant on minerals to power energy sources like wind and solar.

The U.S. Geological Survey’s annual Mineral Commodity Summaries report warns America is entirely reliant on foreign sources for more than half the critical minerals needed for its modern economy. That includes both green energy technologies of the near future, plus the batteries required to power laptops, cell phones, and other everyday items integral to everyday life.

And while the U.S. has agreements with friendly nations for these imports, China remains America’s top supplier — the nation that just sent a spy balloon through the skies over some of the nation’s top security areas.

“We have never been more dependent on China and others for the minerals that are absolutely essential to modern life,” said Katie Sweeney, executive vice president and chief operating officer of the National Mining Association. “The U.S. is stumbling when it comes to our supply chains. With each new announcement of a blocked mine or a foreign sourcing agreement with countries that have questionable labor practices, we are locking in our position of competitive weakness.”

Last year, the U.S. was 100 percent reliant on net imports for 51 nonfuel mineral commodities according to the Geological Survey. The report estimated the value of domestic metal mine production in 2022 was $34.7 billion, which was 6 percent lower than the revised value from 2021. The country’s capacity utilization for the metals mining industry dropped two percentage points from 2021 to 63 percent capacity last year.

The issue is not that the U.S. does not have the capability or resources to produce many of these minerals. The problem, according to mining advocates, is mine permitting takes an average of seven to 10 years.

“It takes forever to get a new permit. How crazy is that?” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said last March at the CERAWeek energy conference. Her comments that she would streamline permitting for sources of minerals needed for electric vehicles “elicit[ed] loud applause,” Reuters reported at the time.

But while comments from Granholm and Jigar Shah, head of the Department of Energy’s Loan Program Office sounded encouraging, the Biden administration remains reluctant to approve new mining projects. Just this month, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency denied permits for Pebble Mine in Alaska – a significant source of copper and gold – to protect salmon habitat.

The project would have mined up to 73 million tons of minerals per year, and Pebble Limited Partnership John Shively said the EPA’s action was “unlawful” and promised litigation over the denial.

Ian Lange, a faculty fellow at the Payne Institute for Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines, bluntly assessed domestic production of minerals as “crappy.” Despite widespread acknowledgment among advocates of green energy that the U.S. cannot reach aggressive climate goals without critical minerals, Lange said many are more comfortable with outsourcing mining so they don’t have to see it happening – an advanced NIMBY-ism.

“The people who are supportive of clean energy but don’t want mining in the U.S. call it ‘friend-shoring’ where it’s sourced out to countries like Canada and Australia that do have environmental safeguards and labor standards,” he said.

The average time for permits in both of those countries is two to three years, according to the National Mining Association. But regardless of the good relationship the U.S. enjoys with those countries, China far surpasses them in production.

China is the largest processor of copper, nickel, cobalt, lithium, and rare earth minerals – all needed to power rechargeable batteries and other components of green technology, the association said. China is also planning 107 lithium-ion battery mega factories compared to nine in the U.S.; according to the mining association, that is the equivalent of China building one factory per week while the U.S. builds one every four months.

Increasing domestic production would meet two goals for the disparate groups that support mining and oppose it on environmental grounds: increasing economic development here at home.

“Both parties are interested in the same story of economic growth in the U.S.,” Lange said. “Low-income populations would a chance to expand [opportunities] because that’s where mineral deposits tend to be. But we’re missing out on the jobs and economic development that might come from developing a mine and supporting infrastructure.”

North Carolina has significant lithium deposits, and Idaho features large deposits of copper. In Minnesota, Twin Metals, which could produce approximately 30 million pounds of cobalt, and PolyMet, which could yield as much as 170 million pounds of nickel, are both stalled in the permitting process, the mining association said. And neither Resolution Copper in Arizona – a potential source of 25 percent of U.S. copper – nor Lithium Americas Thacker Pass in Nevada – the largest lithium deposit in the country – show signs of progress.

And then there’s the story from Maine, where the world’s richest hard rock lithium deposit was recently discovered, but state law forbids the mining procedures needed to extract it. Thanks to anti-mining laws, the $1.5 billion find may have to remain in the ground, and not in U.S. manufactured technology.

“We have tons of these minerals,” Lange said. “We have more than we’ll ever need but nobody likes a mine in their backyard.”

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Despite Ties to China, Both PA U.S. Senators Use TikTok

If you catch a member of the U.S. Senate watching middle-school teachers doing a dance routine from the musical “Cats” on TikTok, there is a very good chance that lawmaker is from Pennsylvania.

A review by States Newsroom found just 32 members of Congress, including seven senators, have TikTok accounts. Sens. Bob Casey and John Fetterman are two of them. The Delaware Valley’s own Rep. Chrissy Houlahan is also on the list.

“While there are no laws in place banning lawmakers from using the app on their personal devices, cybersecurity experts have raised concerns over data collection for those members who deal with sensitive government topics,” the news service reported.

TikTok is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, over which China’s Communist regime has direct control. Chinese laws mandate companies doing business in that nation must make data available to the government.

TikTok has also been cited as one of the most invasive apps in wide use, sucking up personal data from devices unrelated to the funny dance videos and other content on the app. It can collect user contact lists, access calendars, even scan hard drives — including external ones.

And despite claims from ByteDance that American customers have nothing to worry about, a recent report from Buzzfeed News revealed leaked audio from TikTok meetings showed U.S. user data had been repeatedly accessed from China.

As a result, federal and state agencies have banned the app from government devices.

Pennsylvania Treasurer Stacy Garrity announced last month TikTok has been banned from all of her department-issued devices.

“Treasury’s computer network is targeted by scammers and criminals every day,” Garrity said. “TikTok presents a clear danger due to its collection of personal data and its close connection to the communist Chinese government.”

Even the U.S. Senate, where Casey and Fetterman serve, unanimously passed the No TikTok on Government Devices Act banning the app from government devices. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) wants to ban TikTok entirely.

“[TikTok] is China’s backdoor into Americans’ lives. It threatens our children’s privacy as well as their mental health,” Hawley tweeted on Tuesday. “Last month Congress banned it on all government devices. Now I will introduce legislation to ban it nationwide.”

The question for Casey and Fetterman is whether they use TikTok on the same devices they use for official business such as emails, spreadsheets, texts, etc. It is a question both senators declined to answer.

They also didn’t address the national security concerns raised by FBI Director Chris Wray, concerns that inspired the State Department, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security to ban the app from federal agency devices.

Former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers is a national security expert who chaired the House Intelligence Committee. He said the question of whether members of Congress should be using TikTok “is black and white.”

“Any government official who is on TikTok should immediately delete their account,” Rogers told Delaware Valley Journal. “Anything on that device is vulnerable to Chinese software, which could have a long tail of consequences. This isn’t a matter of a fun app on which you can scroll. It’s irresponsible to the constituents these elected officials took an oath to serve. Our national security is at stake.”

SAUNDERS: China Is the Antithesis to ESG Love Affair

The pushback against Environmental, Social and Governance has begun. It’s coming from market influencers like Vivek Ramaswamy, cultural influencers like Dilbert creator Scott Adams lambasting it in his (banned) comic strips, and 19 Republican governors going after the banks that push it. It’s a good thing.

Washington and Wall Street want to save the planet, much of it choking on Chinese coal dust. Its Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) policies, particularly the Security and Exchange Commission’s ESG policy proposal for investors, pretend China exists on another planet. Big business and big investment houses wouldn’t have it any other way. They’ll punish the locals for not being environmentally sound. But China can throw chemicals down a river and burn a thousand suns, and it’s OK.

Adherence to ESG rules would make it more expensive to do business in the United States. It is another bad idea that will further drive manufacturing away from the United States and into Asia, led by China.

The SEC is not alone.

An ESG bill passed the House of Representatives in 2021. Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters said, “It’s past time Congress makes ESG requirements explicit.” There are two ways to interpret that. One: make sure investment products and companies declaring to be ESG have the same metrics. Two: ensure companies comply with climate policies to keep them ESG-friendly. Both are valid points if ESG policies are mandated by the SEC or Congress. That bill is now in a Senate committee. It will likely die there.

ESG is a U.N. endeavor that became an investment product. It’s big in Europe. The idea is that portfolio managers and lenders will direct capital to companies that are easy on the environment, hire women and minorities, and are good corporate stewards of the communities they serve. As a standalone, no one is against this idea or real, quality metrics that provide transparency to ESG investors.

But ESG has moved away from being just an investment product. It’s political now. Democrats fully embrace ESG. Republicans, not so much. Significant “woke capital,” as Ramaswamy calls them, loves ESG.

Shareholders can weaponize information from where a company’s electric power comes from to how much fertilizer the local rancher was selling beef to Cargill is using, all to pressure a business based on climate risk or other social causes packaged as environmental justice. Compliance requires costly lawyers who understand the rules. Business leaders then need to shift gears to ensure they are not running afoul of the climate police — which includes global bankers like Rabobank and asset managers like BlackRock that threaten to take their bank loans and investments elsewhere.

The proposed SEC rule will not only define ESG standards but it will also require publicly traded companies to comply with lowering greenhouse gas emissions or risk losing their lenders. This also affects private companies that sell to publicly traded ones. “Not green enough? Sorry, we need to find a greener partner.”

It’s everywhere. The Department of Labor is proposing new rules on pension plans that will require ESG investments as a matter of fiduciary duty.

ESG is voluntary for now. Democrats want to legislate its permanence. They are easily sold on ESG as good for the planet. Big lenders see it as corporate uniformity, doing “good,” and risk reduction. But if implemented, the SEC proposal will be a mega headwind for the United States as greenhouse gas emissions become a costly investment risk — despite the U.S. being a leader in reducing greenhouse gases and environmental standards.

None of these climate policies exist in application anywhere in China.

Picture this: a U.S. mutual fund with an ESG focus invests in Chinese solar companies and supply chains. Chinese polysilicon maker Daqo New Energy trades on the New York Stock Exchange. It’s in climate-change-themed funds, which are total ESG plays. Daqo was placed on the Commerce Department’s Entity List in 2021 for forced labor. So? BlackRock, Templeton, PIMCO, Fidelity, Vanguard, Morgan Stanley and State Street own 13 million shares. Americans who own the iShares Global Clean Energy ETF own Daqo, which probably uses Muslim prison labor.

ESG was designed to be voluntary. Now its strictest adherents, which include major Wall Street investors and lenders, want it to be mandated. Meanwhile, the usual hypocrites at global companies who are ESG fans will continue sourcing from China, where widgets are made thanks largely to coal-fired power plants. Those are bad here. Not ESG enough. But weak environmental rules and no women in power anywhere, that is perfectly fine in China.

No U.S. company should be forced to follow a climate policy its biggest rival can ignore. ESG must remain an optional investment product, not an investment policy.

Chester County Mother Shares Story of Her Daughter’s Fentanyl Death With Dr. Oz

As Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz was speaking during an event at the Desmond Hotel for Chester County Republicans recently, a Tredyffrin woman joined him on stage and spoke about her daughter’s death from fentanyl.

“We live two miles away,” said Leslie Holt. “A criminal came from Philadelphia. He brought meth-3 fentanyl, which is a drug they did not even test on animals. They know the outcome. This criminal drove into this beautiful neighborhood in his Jaguar (and) delivered this poison into our mailbox.”

Her daughter, Lana, 32, was self-medicating for pain from Lyme disease, she said.

“My husband found her the next morning,” she said. “And the criminal that brought this to our home is appealing his sentence. And John Fetterman will be the person who says, ‘Hey, this is fine. Give him another chance.’ He’s only had about 50, mind you, and he’s got a rap sheet two pages long. But he’s appealing.”

Leslie Holt with a picture of her late daughter, Lana

“I can’t even get my daughter’s phone back because it’s evidence,” Holt said. “She worked at the University of Pennsylvania with animals. She had so much promise. And someone poisoned her. And this is happening all throughout Chester County.  And no one is addressing it or talking about it. It’s coming here from Mexico and China.”

Oz said that the influx of fentanyl was caused by “weak, weak leadership at the federal level.”  He promised that he and congressional candidate Guy Ciarrocchi would take steps to stop it if elected.

“We will close the border with smart policies,” said Oz. “Allow legal immigration but we have to close the border.”

“We cannot afford to allow a purposeful misdirection of our nation,” said Oz. “I was in Philadelphia at a prayer vigil in Olney for a murder that happened, last year, 561 murders, the worst of any major city. Shocking.”

At the prayer vigil, someone told him it was easier to find Fentanyl than baby formula.

“I was stunned,” he said. “She was right.”

“How could the land of opportunity, the land of plenty, leave people with Fentanyl and no baby formula?”

Oz visited the Kensington area of Philadelphia to get a better idea of the devastation that drugs have brought. And while there, Oz took four addicts who expressed an interest in treatment to a nearby rehabilitation center.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, drug overdose deaths rose to nearly 108,000 in 2021, up 15 percent from 2020. But 2020 saw a nearly 30 percent spike in overdose deaths.

But for Holt, Lana’s death is not just a number.

“Unfortunately, it’s happening more and more frequently,” said Holt. Between her two children, “they’ve easily lost 15 to 20 friends from high school,” she said. “Not to single out Conestoga. These were kids who had been to my home, to sleep overs.”

Holt and her husband, Tim, believe Lana’s death was accidental on her part because she’d been taking what she thought was methadone for her Lyme-related pain. She had been suffering from the effects of Lyme disease for years and also the trauma of being raped by a family friend at the age of 14. Lana kept the rape a secret but that took a psychological toll.

“Trauma is the gateway drug,” said Holt.

After Lana’s death, Holt “shut down.” But then she decided she had to do something. Previously, Holt and a friend started s nonprofit RADAR to map sexual predators with a map and pin showing where they were assaulted. And Holt started another nonprofit as an off-shoot, A Child’s Light, to pay for therapy for children in Chester County who have been sexually or physically abused. She and Tim also take coats to Kensington to give to homeless addicts on Lana’s behalf. The coats bear tags that say “Love, Lana.”

Tim Holt found his daughter early in the morning of Nov. 2, 2018.  She could not be revived. But the Tredyffrin police used her cell phone to lure her dealer–the guy that delivered the fatal meth-3-fentanyl to their mailbox—to a make another delivery. This time it resulted in the arrest of Ricky Lowe, who drove up in his Jaguar. Lowe was convicted by a Chester County jury and sentenced to 17 to 33 years.

The trial was an ordeal for the Holt family. Lowe’s “crew” came to court and tried to start fights with her son. At one point she called the sheriff for help.

“My husband and son were shattered by Lana’s death,” she said.

So, when she learned about John Fetterman, as lieutenant governor chairing the Board of Pardons and working to pardon convicts, Holt got angry. Like most inmates, Lowe is appealing and the thought of the drug dealer who provided the poison that killed her daughter getting out early motivated her to speak out and to oppose Fetterman’s Senate candidacy.

And Oz has promised to work to stop fentanyl from coming across the border from Mexico. After Oz invited Holt onto the stage, they met privately after the event.

“I really felt as if he heard me,” she said. “I just felt as though he was not a stranger to this issue.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

KOCH: Contractor Is in Trouble With the Pentagon

With contracts in the billions to trillions of dollars range, bidding at the Pentagon can be a tricky, albeit big business. The proposal process is complicated, and competition is thick. A mistake to avoid is importing materials from an adversary when making American military equipment. One American company did just that — importing a critical engine part for fighter jets from China — and the Pentagon isn’t happy.

Reuters reported on September 7 that the “Pentagon has stopped accepting new F-35 jets after it discovered a magnet used in the stealthy fighter’s engine was made with unauthorized material from China, a U.S. official said.”

The Pentagon investigation started in August and concluded that an alloy in the F-35 jet engine lubricant pump used unauthorized Chinese content. This part violates federal law, which prevents using metals or alloys from American adversaries China, Iran, North Korea or Russia for Pentagon acquisition programs.

The F-35 fighter jet has had many problems over the years. Dan Grazier wrote in The Hill in April 2021 that the F-35 program has “a projected cost over $1.7 trillion” and “exhibits everything from structural cracks to cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Twenty years in development — and it still can’t shoot straight and is rarely ready to fly when it is needed.”

It was supposed to be a “low-cost plane intended to serve the needs of all military branches.” Only in Washington could a program costing more than $1 trillion be classified as “low cost.”

The design flaws are numerous in the program, and some of them were never intended to be corrected. Business Insider reported on March 13, 2020, “The beleaguered F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is still suffering from hundreds of unresolved design flaws, according to a new report from a nongovernmental watchdog, dozens of which the Defense Department has ‘no plan’ to ever correct.”

The Project on Government Oversight requested information about the program. It was provided a list of 833 design flaws, with more than half in dispute between the contractor and the government. More than 100 were designated to never be fixed by the contractor.

With the numerous problems slowing this expensive program, now the threat emerges of a Chinese part being used to manufacture the F-35s. There may be issues in replacing that part thanks to the need to find a new domestic supplier of a specialty product. This will cause even more slowdowns in a program that has promised so much and delivered so little.

It seems as obvious as saying water is wet, but U.S. military hardware should be made with American parts. There is a slew of reasons for this, not the least of which is ensuring foreign powers cannot tamper with our military equipment by putting in a defective part or one that could track a stealth aircraft.

This is a big problem because, as Bloomberg News reported on September 9, “every one of the more than 825 F-35 fighter jets delivered so far contain a component made with a Chinese alloy that’s prohibited by both U.S. law and Pentagon regulations, according to the program office that oversees the aircraft.

One would think somebody would have picked up on this before more than 800 aircraft were built and delivered to the military. But this is the federal government, so think again. The more we learn about the program, the more problems we discover.

The concerns are many. What if this part has been put into the program intentionally by the Chinese who want to sabotage the engines with a product designed to fail or for espionage? There’s certainly a motive. The Chinese military doesn’t want to face the F-35s in a potential conflict. That’s for certain.

If taxpayers pay top dollar for a military aircraft, they expect the best America offers. Not a clunker of an aircraft that has violated the law with a banned Chinese engine part.

MASS: American Health Care’s ‘China Syndrome’ 

Among the most striking effects of the overhead built into the annual national cost of our dysfunctional healthcare system has been the outsourcing to China of the manufacture of many pharmaceuticals and medical supplies used here at home.

Part of that historic shift has been a change in the sourcing of the active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) that go into our medicines and vitamins. In the 1990s, 90 percent of the world’s APIs came from the U.S., Europe, and Japan. China is now the largest global supplier of APIs.

The effect on the quality of the supplies in America’s medicine chest has been alarming. Shortages and contaminated products are chronic and constitute a slowly unfolding healthcare crisis for the United States. But a national security threat of incalculable measure has developed out of our country’s reliance on China for drugs, protective equipment, and medical supplies.

By driving up all of the costs of needless overhead in our healthcare system, we compelled our manufacturing sector to seek lower labor costs in China. We now see that this manufacturing must be brought home or placed within the borders of staunch allies. Despite the many obstacles that stand in the way of doing that, it would be a supreme, historic folly to delay. We cannot wait until the next pandemic to address this threat.

In 2022, China has become the source of approximately 40 percent of the world’s Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs), the chemical building blocks that are critical to making drugs. Few in the United States, even among physicians, are fully aware of just how drastic our dependence has become.

Here are just a few examples. Approximately 97 percent of antibiotics used in the United States, including drugs as basic as penicillin and amoxicillin, now come from China. And almost all of the contrast dye needed for many diagnostic procedures originates in a single facility in Shanghai, which recently closed because of a COVID-related lockdown. Putting all our eggs in one or a few baskets concerning medically related supplies demonstrated severe consequences, as across the United States, physicians now warn that rationed and deferred diagnostic procedures as a result of this closure, will inevitably have medically unfortunate consequences.

Much of the personal protective equipment (PPE), so much in the forefront of the news during the worst of the pandemic in 2020, also originates in China. The country where the pandemic erupted suddenly needed the PPE in short supply in the United States.

But of equal seriousness to the risks associated with reductions in or cutoffs of these desperately needed supplies exported from China is the chronically vexing question of the quality and safety of those exports.

A few examples:

Chinese-made KN95 masks were found to be substandard during the pandemic. Just before COVID-19 struck, eight million Chinese-made surgical gowns were recalled for not having been produced under sterile conditions.

In 2019, three commonly used blood pressure medications manufactured in China were found to be tainted with carcinogens.

In 2008, news reports compelled the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to acknowledge that 81 deaths from contaminated heparin—made in China and sold worldwide—had been produced in a facility the FDA had not inspected. 81 Given the dramatic shift by the United States to foreign-made medications and supplies, it is not surprising that the FDA has struggled to keep up with its legally required inspections of manufacturing facilities overseas. And when the pandemic hit, inspections stopped.

The implications for public health and national security are staggering. By inspecting only a small fraction of Chinese manufacturing plants and their output, the FDA fails to perform its primary duty of ensuring drug and product safety. This puts Americans in harm’s way.

Medications with ingredients from China are used in the United States for routine surgeries, common and less-common infections, psychiatric disorders, cancer, and seizures. Those with chronic diseases who must take medication and the young who have years ahead of taking these medications are most at risk of developing cancers and other long-term complications from possibly tainted products that have not yet been detected.

In May 2020, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) introduced the bipartisan “Strengthening Supply Chains for Service Members and Security Act” (H.R.6374). The bill would implement the recommendations from a previous Department of Defense Office of Inspector General (DOD OIG) report to address the nation’s overreliance on foreign-made pharmaceuticals.

Tariffs imposed during the Trump years and sustained, at least so far, by the Biden administration were a step in the direction of stimulating domestic production of the class of products discussed above.

America must reclaim the manufacture of its medical supplies and critical drugs made from safe APIs. Those who shape our trade policy and create the ground rules that have driven the decisions of American corporations to send manufacturing abroad must act now to reverse course. The FDA must strengthen its staffing for auditing foreign manufacturers that are significant vendors in our supply chain.  Any foreign country’s refusal to allow free and timely access to production facilities must be fined and either suspended or terminated as a vendor.

The proverbial Sword of Damocles dangles above us. To the greatest degree and by any policy and regulatory means, including taxation rates, the United States must bring home the production of the ingredients that go into a revitalized domestic manufacture of the tools we use to care for our sick. Posthaste.

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Does the FDA Do More Harm Than Good?

Is it time to shut down the FDA?

Just days after the Food and Drug Administration released a report acknowledging its failings in the baby formula shortage, a group of former FDA employees and policy experts gathered at an InsideSources roundtable to debate the question. Dr. Richard Williams, who spent 27 years working on food safety at the FDA, said he was surprised by his own answer.

“Maybe we can make more progress if we break it up.”

It is not just formula-seeking families frustrated by the FDA’s performance.  The agency, which regulates 20 percent of the U.S. consumer economy, has been at the center of some of the biggest public policy fiascos of the past five years. Critics say it needlessly delayed the rollout of COVID testing in the early days of the pandemic. Its bureaucracy has slowed the progress of potentially life-saving drugs to market. It has misinformed smokers about the benefits of switching from combustible cigarettes to alternatives like vaping. And a new investigation by Politico found that, despite having the word “food” in its name, the FDA is routinely failing at keeping unsafe foods off the market.

Williams, an economist with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, is the author of  “Fixing Food: An FDA Insider Unravels the Myths and the Solutions.” He said that even as the FDA’s performance has lagged, its budget has soared — more than doubling between 2010 to 2021 to $6.4 billion. And in the face of its recent fumbles, the agency is asking for another 30 percent budget hike. Worse, said Williams, the FDA is using its recent failings to support its requests for more money, claiming they need more resources to enforce more regulations.

“I was working on infant formula in the early 1980s when the Infant Formula Act was passed,” Williams said. “And I asked, ‘Why are there only six firms making infant formula?’ The answer was, ‘We discourage anybody else from coming into the market. We don’t want more plants to inspect, so we don’t have as much control.'”

“And how many firms are in the infant formula market today? Six.”

Chalfont pediatrician Dr. Marion Mass sees the same issue.

“This shutdown unmasked an even bigger problem — there are so few baby formula plants in the United States that a single shutdown can have major consequences, as we’ve been seeing,” she wrote for the New York Post. “That doesn’t mean we need new legislation mandating more baby-formula manufacturers and plants. In fact, the right answer is that we need less government, not more.”

Mass, who is with the group Free2Care, told DVJournal the FDA is supposed to make sure food and drugs are safe. However, with many drugs or their precursor chemicals being manufactured in China, the FDA is less able to be vigilant.

“Among the most striking effects of the overhead built into the annual national cost of our dysfunctional healthcare system, has been the outsourcing to China of the manufacture of many pharmaceuticals and medical supplies used here at home,” she said. “The effect on the quality of the supplies in America’s medicine chest has been alarming. Shortages and contaminated products are chronic and constitute a slowly unfolding healthcare crisis for the United States.”

Panelist Jack Kalavritinos, a health communications expert who has worked at both Health and Human Services and the FDA said the core issue is leadership. “Leadership matters and specific changes need to be made.”

“Right after the public health emergency was called for in January [2020] the FDA put out an odd blog,” said Kalavritinos. “It talked about how COVID tests should be limited and how there should be less authority for the private sector through expedited approval processes.”

When that was brought to HHS Secretary Alex Azar’s attention, “the secretary stepped in, he overruled that [FDA guidance], and thus began the process of unleashing the private sector,” Kalavritinos said. “It makes the point that a federal agency, at a key moment in time, should not be making policy and law through a blog post.”

And lack of leadership was part of the baby formula shortage failure, he added.

“When you shut down a plant like this, the new FDA commissioner should literally drive over to the West Wing — and bring the HHS deputy secretary with you — and say, ‘If we work fast, it will still take months to get this factory back online. But if we don’t take extraordinary actions, there will be shortages.'”

“That takes leadership, and that didn’t happen,” Kalavritinos said.

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