Tempus Edax Rerum said:

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Mothra said:

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sombear said:

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Mothra said:

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sombear said:

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Tempus Edax Rerum said:

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See the editorial below from the WSJ from January 23rd, 2025. Is the WSJ lying too? Is it a left wing nut job hack piece as well?


Senate Republicans are burying their heads to avoid many of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s positions. The question is whether the ostrich routine risks allowing Mr. Kennedy, should he win confirmation as health and human services secretary, to put trial lawyers in charge of American business, regulators and Congress itself.

The longtime Democrat's nomination hearings begin next week. The Republican effort to excuse or divert attention from Mr. Kennedy's disqualifying views has been a mix of hilarity and cringe. How to rationalize a nominee who rejects basic science, who labels U.S. farmers a greater threat than al Qaeda, who wants to "punish" climate "deniers," who loves big government? Senators have variously mumbled that Mr. Kennedy didn't understand, or was misunderstood, or has shed 50 years of leftist ideology.

Yet it all fails to confront the motivating impulse behind Mr. Kennedy's dubious positions. To understand how Mr. Kennedy arrived at his outlier views, one must first understand his interest in getting there. The short answer: He's a trial lawyer, a specialist in extortion by litigation, a practice he acknowledges he wants to encourage via public office.

His colorful past obscures the reality of Mr. Kennedy's lifetime calling: suing, and suing more. He started in the nonprofit world but joined the ranks of plaintiffs firms that squeeze companies for settlementsthe lawyers getting huge contingency fees while clients sometimes get little. His recent government ethics filing notes his continuing legal work or positions with trial firms that include Kennedy & Madonna (which changed its name to Madonna & Madonna on Jan. 13), Morgan & Morgan, and Wisner Baum.

That career puts Mr. Kennedy's campaigns in a different context. To listen to the nominee, his war against the weed killer glyphosate is motivated by his desire to save humans from "poison." Then again, it was Mr. Kennedy's claim that glyphosate is carcinogenica position rejected by most health agenciesthat enabled him and other lawyers to land a $289 million judgment against Roundup maker Monsanto. (The judgment was reduced on appeal.)

This tort mindset matters deeply because it isby Mr. Kennedy's own admissionbehind his goal of running HHS. In an interview in July with "Dr. Phil" McGraw, Mr. Kennedy, then an independent presidential candidate, said that Congress and regulators were all on industry "payrolls" and useless. So he had a different plan. He'd "go down to NIH"the National Institutes of Health, which is part of HHSand order it to "find out" what products are "causing" chronic disease. "Once you have that science that makes that causal connection between an exposure and an injury," he said, that "allows attorneys to bring lawsuits." He adds that "you can't do it through Congress," so "attorneys can come in and it's the market fixing the problem, rather than government."

He emphasized the same strategy after endorsing Mr. Trump. On Fox's "Jesse Watters Primetime" in September, he said that his "plan" to unravel "corporate capture" was to take the "$42 billion dollar budget of NIH," "figure out what is causing" chronic disease," and "name names." Then, "once we have a good science out there, the litigators come in and we'll solve the problem."

Mr. Kennedy still has his trial-lawyer friends in mind as he goes about his public campaigns. Consider his November tweet promising to "remove fluoride from public water" since he says it's behind everything from arthritis to thyroid disease. He tagged Michael Connett, an attorney suing the Environmental Protection Agency and makers of children's toothpaste and mouthwash over fluoride.

Even "Make America Healthy Again" becomes ethically suspect in Mr. Kennedy's hands. Consider his war on "junk" or "ultraprocessed" foods. Mr. Kennedy currently has a referral agreement and of-counsel position with Morgan & Morgan, a law firm that last month bragged it had filed a giant, "first of its kind" lawsuit against Kraft and others for engineering their "ultra-processed food products to be addictive" and causing "chronic disease." Every time an HHS Secretary Kennedy opens his mouth, he'd potentially be providing an in-kind contribution to trial lawyers who'll use his words as evidence in court. (The White House didn't respond to a request for comment.)

Which gets to Mr. Kennedy's own ethics issues. In his filing, he says he will relinquish his legal positions on confirmation, though he plans to continue collecting 10% of fees awarded in contingency cases he referred to Wisner Baum. That firm is suing Merck over its HPV vaccine. According to government records, Mr. Kennedy has collected $2.5 million from the firm over the past two years. While he says he'll collect fees only in cases where the U.S. isn't a party, that means little when he has the power to trash-talk the companies and products in the trial bar's sights.

The GOP has rightly taken a dim view of the trial bar's manipulation of the legal system. Every senator now must consider how to justify placing an unrepentant advocate of that industry in a position of power to facilitate further abuse in a way that negates the role of Congress.
Write to kim@wsj.com.

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He's a narcistic whacko fraud, but I guess people like his position on seed oils . . . .

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You're right on a long of things. This isn't one of them, nor is your position in vaccines.

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Respect your position as always, but fact is, if RFK Jr. had not become affiliated with Trump, conservatives would see him as the leftist radical he always was and I think still is.

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Been following RFK for about 14 years now. Heard his speak on several occasions, and have reviewed a lot of the evidence he's presented at his talks. I am not sure leftist is a word I would ever use to describe him, though he is certainly to the left of me.

But he's not all wrong on vaccines, or the vaccine schedule. I think you'd be surprised at the evidence, quite frankly.

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Actually, he is very wrong and the medical establishment has disowned this clown a long time ago.

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MUST SEE: RFK Jr.'s POWERFUL speech in the Oval Office before officially launching the MAHA Commission!

Watch Live:https://t.co/6XOHn4HDgg pic.twitter.com/epCANY722f

— Alex Jones (@RealAlexJones) February 14, 2025

Doc Holliday said:

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This is what actual fascism looks like. Bernie over here saying you can't even question muh "science".

As Robert F. Kennedy becomes Secretary of HHS, we must remember that “Just asking questions” about vaccines, and casting doubt on well-established science could have fatal consequences. Just ask the people of South Africa.

Researchers estimate over 300,000 South Africans died…

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) February 14, 2025

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