Check out the website: https://lenspoliticalnotes.com Look at the recent Political Notes and Len’s Letters on the website:
December 8th, 2024 Len’s Political Note #690 Oppose Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Secretary of Health and Human Services
2025 Trump Cabinet
I was not a fan of Robert Kennedy Jr’s father. Nor was his uncle my first choice for the Democratic nomination for President in 1960. Of course, I would not have wanted either of them killed. What’s more, upon reflection, I think it probable that, had Robert Kennedy not been killed in 1968, he would have been elected president – a far better choice than Richard Nixon.
Robert Kennedy Jr. began the 2024 campaign running for President. He would have been a terrible President. He would be an equally terrible Secretary of Health and Human Service. Donald Trump had it exactly right (I don’t write that kind of sentence often) when he said about Kennedy Jr. “I’m going to let him go wild on health. I’m going to let him go wild on the food. I’m going to let him go wild on the medicines…”. There is no other way for Robert Kennedy Jr. than to go wild, to be obsessed with what he is attempting to do. Even if Robert Kennedy Jr. were right about health and food and medicines (and there are a few things he is right on), he would approach the task as an obsessive, would get the results wrong, and might destroy the organization while he is at it..
Robert Kennedy Jr is a reformed drug addict. He is a reformed sex addict. He is unreformed in his obsession with popular approval, even adulation. As many analysts of addicts explain, replacing one addition for another is common. Addiction, after all, is not really about the abusive substance or activity, it is a bad solution to some unmet emotional need. If the emotional need is not, somehow exorcised (How is that for a word for therapy?), some other obsession will take over.
Born in 1954, Robert Kennedy Jr is 70 years old now. The third of eleven children, his father was assassinated during his presidential campaign in 1968 when he was 14 years old. After the assassination, he was in and out of several boarding schools until, finally housed with a surrogate family, he completed high school at a private day school in Watertown, Massachusetts. He began his drug use, accompanied by his high school leadership of groups of friends and relatives in vandalization, theft, and cruel practical jokes.
He went to and graduated from Harvard, which rarely rejects a Kennedy. There, he tried heroin and cocaine, leading other students in that behavior. After getting a law degree from the University of Virginia (as did his father), he was hired by Manhattan District Attorney Henry Morgenthau and would have worked as an Assistant District Attorney had he passed the bar exam. Later, he was arrested for drug possession, pled guilty, and served two years on probation. He says the mandatory rehab helped him end 15 years of drug use. His probationary work led him to the Riverkeeper organization during which time he passed the bar and began his successful career as an environmental lawyer. He also demonstrated his capacity for disruption. As the organization’s attorney and a board member, he hired a former environmental criminal, leading to a majority of board members resigning.
He worked his way through his marriages, one of which ended with his ex-wife’s suicide. We know of his sex addiction because he kept a diary as part of his 12 step obligation. His diary, over a single year, reported, for the year, on dozens of women with whom he had sexual liaisons along with dehumanizing ratings of each woman’s sexual acts.
The following is relevant – I promise. I remember, in the early to mid-nineties, having been superintendent for about 20 years at that time of a small Massachusetts school district, that I was troubled by the increase in the number of autistic children. I read what I could, discovered the theory about the impact of mercury used to preserve childhood vaccines. Alarmed, I read further and learned that additional research had debunked the theory and that pharmaceutical companies, in what people might call an abundance of caution, had, nevertheless, stopped using the mercury-based preservative. I stopped thinking about the causes of the increase in autism, went back to work with my schools to find the best ways of educating the children in our schools who were on the autism scale, and later wondered if the change in numbers was a product of a shift in how families and society dealt with these children – no longer sending them away to institutions, instead actually sending these children to school.
In the early 2000s, Robert F. Kennedy was presented with the theory of the effect of the mercury based preservative in vaccinations as a cause of autism. By then, Robert F. Kennedy was more than the family name; he would soon be a finalist for trial lawyer of the year for his successful law suit against Du Pont’s pollution. He was on a roll. He got large fees as a speaker, participated in the creation of a venture capital firm that invested heavily in Tesla. He was working on behalf of the poor and on behalf of indigenous communities. He criticized the environmental damage the US military was causing. He fought to close a nuclear plant in New York, persuaded Fidel Castro not to build one, and had opposed an enormous hydro plant in Quebec. He was accustomed to those in authority misleading people about the harm they do.
Following up on the theory that vaccinations caused autism, he met with the head of the NIH as well as government’s top infectious disease specialist, Anthony Fauci. Presumably, Robert F Kennedy got the same answers I got from google about vaccines being preserved by mercury.
Robert Kennedy Jr came away from his meetings convinced. Government agencies were lying to him. They were shills for the pharmaceutical industry. He wrote an article about it for Rolling Stone magazine. In the face of criticism, Rolling Stone pulled the article. Robert Kennedy Jr., not the pharmaceutical industry, was attacked for being misleading, for lying. The attacks, he thought, were proof that he was right.
Robert Kennedy Jr. had found a new obsession. He wrote books on the problem. He created an organization to fight the danger. He made what would have been, for someone else, a fortune in carrying out the fight.
It used to be that pro-choice people would say: We pass laws prohibiting women from having abortion. What restrictions do men face in the control of their bodies? Robert Kennedy, Donald Trump, and a slew of others have an answer. Men and women, boys and girls are required to be vaccinated. Pharmaceutical companies, they say, profit from those mandates. Worse, the vaccines created to stop the Covid 19 pandemic were developed in a hurry.
Robert Kennedy Jr.’s criticisms of vaccines got him labeled by the Center for Countering Hate as being among the Disinformation Dozen. In turn, then, he was suspended from Instagram. That did it. After complaining about Dr. Fauci, he focused on Bill Gates who was bringing vaccines to Africa. “They” were creating a new totalitarianism. “They” were ending democracy. “They” would cut off our food supply. Like his father, he thought (and the unacknowledged Gene McCarthy), who had challenged Lyndon Johnson, he was challenging the current medical establishment. Skeptical about the medical establishment, capable of preserving some votes for the Republican ticket, Trump announced he would appoint Kennedy as a health, medicine, and food Czar and let him go wild.
A Secretary of Health and Human Services who believes “There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective” is dangerous to the health of Americans. Let me quote some Brits. Dr. David Elliman at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London decries Kennedy’s perpetuation of myths about vaccinations and says “RFK Jr could …. be responsible for the death and disability of myriads of people, particularly children.”
That’s not all, of course. Robert Kennedy Jr. opposes fluoride in water systems claiming that fluoride is “associated with arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders, and thyroid disease”. Prof Avijit Banerjee, chair of cardiology and operative dentistry at King’s College London explains there can be bad effects from fluoride, but only in much higher concentration than exists when fluoride is in water systems.
Robert Kennedy Jr. has argued that the Covid-19 virus targets Black people and Caucasians; that Ashkenazi Jews and the Chinese are relatively immune from the disease. Prof Melinda Mills at Oxford University’s Nuffield Department of Population Health says this claim just does not reflect scientific evidence.
Kennedy may get a sympathetic audience from progressives about his claim that ultra-processed foods cause cancer and mental health difficulties. Dr David Nunan, from the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine (CEBM) says multiple factors have to be considered for various health issues, that studies have not yet separated out the specific impact of ultra-processed foods on health.
If Robert Kennedy Jr. “goes wild” dealing with the health of the people of the United States and the world, he will do irreparable harm. Call your Senator and ask him or her to oppose Robert F Kennedy’s nomination. Contact the members of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) committee to oppose him.
Politico notes that Kennedy shares many of the goals of progressives: Ending chronic disease. Restoring the nation’s farmland. Protecting the environment. Curbing corporate power. Taking on Big Pharma. Progressives and progressive organizations are opposing him anyhow.
Progressives are not targeting Trump here. They are targeting a Trump nominee who may share some of their goals, but has unscientific and irrational reasons for his views. Progressives, moderates, conservatives either recognize or should recognize the danger Robert Kennedy Jr. in office.
Republicans are crucial because at least four of them are needed to prevent confirmation of a nomination. Here are some numbers to call.
Current Republican members of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and. Pensions who will still be in the Senate include:
Bill Cassidy of Louisiana who will probably Chair the committee. Try calling his Baton Rouge office (318) 448-7176. I could not find his Washington office.
Rand Paul of Kentucky 202-224-4343
Susan Collins of Maine (202) 224-2523
Lisa Murkowski of Alaska (202)-224-6665
Roger Marshall of Kansas. 202-224-4774
Tommy Tuberville of Alabama 202-224-4124
Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma 202-224-4721
Ted Budd of North Carolina 202-224-3154
Let the Democrats know, too. It is important that Democratic Senators know that people believe Robert Kennedy Jr. is a dangerous nominee and should be opposed.
Bernie Sanders of Vermont is the probable Ranking Member 202-224-5141
Patty Murray of Washington 202-224-2621
Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin 202-224-5653
Chris Murphy of Connecticut 202-224-4041
Tim Kaine of Virginia. 202-224-4024
Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire. 202-224-3324
Tina Smith of Minnesota 202-224-5641
Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico 202-224-6621
John Hickenlooper of Colorado 202-224-5941
Ed Markey of Massachusetts 202-224-2742
Remember to call your own Senators.
Do what you can to stop Robert F Kennedy Jr now.
Simon Rosenberg also suggests: Contact the White House and ask President Biden to order the FBI to begin background checks into Trump’s nominees immediately
