The battle over health care now heads to the Senate.

With the historic passage of a massive health care overhaul (HR 3962 ) in the House, the fate of the legislation will now be decided in the Senate.

Over the weekend, President Barack Obama urged the Senate to finish work on the bill by the end of the year and “bring this effort to the finish line.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is waiting to hear back from the Congressional Budget Office on the estimated costs of a combined bill, according to CQ reporters Drew Armstrong and Alan Ota.

Several issues are in play:

* Filibuster. Sen. Joe Lieberman (ID-Conn.) and some Republican senators have threatened to filibuster the bill, forcing Reid to get 60 votes to get the bill across the finish line.

* Public option. Conservatives oppose any kind of government-run plan in the plan. Reid may push an “opt-out” or “trigger” provision to allow states not to participate to win over moderates.

* Cost. The House version of the bill cost $1.1 trillion. Conservative senators of both parties may be skeptical if the CBO’s score of the Senate version is too high.

* Abortion. In a last-minute compromise, the House added restrictions on abortion coverage in new insurance programs created by the bill. The Senate bill will likely not be as restrictive.

* Illegal immigrants. Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus have threatened to oppose the bill if it includes any tougher language prohibiting illegal immigrants from buying insurance.

In addition, Reid is running for re-election in his home state of Nevada in 2010, complicating his duties as Democratic leader.

As a prelude to the upcoming Copenhagen conference of the nations participating in the Convention on Climate Change, Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), who chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee, introduced and passed out of committee sweeping energy reform legislation. This measure faces much tougher hurdles before the full Senate.

To promote her legislation (a companion to the Waxman-Markey “cap and trade” bill passed by the House) Boxer held a hearing at which she argued that passage of the bill was a matter of national security. She is wrong. Her legislation could actually undermine the nation’s capacity to keep Americans safe, free, and prosperous. Furthermore, the dangers posed by the Senate bill are reflective of many of the national security challenges that could be raised by efforts at Copenhagen to draft a global climate treaty.

Fighting the Air up There

The premise behind Boxer’s bill is that the U.S. must create a government-run program to reduce the emission of “greenhouse gases,” including carbon dioxide (CO2). The bill would establish a complex energy tax scheme to penalize businesses and industries that emit these gases. Proponents of the legislation have argued that its passage is essential to U.S. national security. Without the law, proponents claim, adverse climate changes will cause nations to fail, natural disasters will yield unprecedented humanitarian crises, and states will wage war over the remaining resources.

Rather than allow the U.S. to better address the challenges of climate change, Boxer’s tax scheme is likely to undermine both U.S. security and America’s capacity to act as a good steward of the environment. A study by The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis found that the companion Waxman-Markey bill would make the U.S. about $9.4 trillion poorer by 2035. Much of this decline would be from reduced economic productivity and job losses. In particular, under the House legislation there would be 1.15 million fewer jobs on average than without a cap-and-trade bill. Other economic concerns include rising deficits and continued devaluing of the dollar.

A sharp decline in economic productivity would likely have a deleterious impact on U.S. security. A decrease in U.S. economic growth would result in even more draconian cuts to the defense budget. Likewise, a steep drop in American economic growth would lengthen and deepen the global recession, thereby increasing the number of failed states.

On to Copenhagen

The wrongheaded approach taken by Boxer is likely to be mirrored in the deliberations at Copenhagen, where efforts to restrict greenhouse gas emissions could undermine both the global economy and worldwide security–outcomes that would lead to a more fragile environment and greater human misery.

Without question, the greatest security threat of an international climate treaty is that it would make the economies of the U.S. and its allies less competitive, depriving them of the capacity to defend themselves and aid other nations.

Additionally, advocates of the treaty insist that it not include a clause that allows emissions reductions to be subject to “conformity with domestic law.” In other words, even if U.S. laws included an exemption for emissions by the military, such an opt-out could potentially be trumped by an international treaty.

The U.S. military is the nation’s largest consumer of fossil fuels. As Major General (ret.) Robert Scales testified in Boxer’s hearing, despite any innovations in new energy technologies made in the foreseeable future, most military forces will continue to be powered by fossil fuels. Thus, mandated fossil fuel reductions could severely limit the capacity of the U.S. to defend itself and its allies and conduct humanitarian and security-assistance missions worldwide.

In addition, since the military has no choice other than to rely on fossil fuels for the foreseeable future, any tax scheme that makes carbon-based fuels more expensive will mean the Pentagon will have to spend more on fuel and less on everything else that America’s men and women in uniform need. Regardless of how the climate changes or the status of energy supplies, the U.S. will need a military that has sufficient resources to conduct current operations, maintain a trained and ready force, and prepare for future challenges. Long-term levels of defense spending are already too low to prevent the military from becoming a hollow force. A steep rise in carbon-fuel costs will exacerbate this decline.

Finally, an international climate treaty is likely to disadvantage the U.S. and other democracies that sign the convention in competing with authoritarian regimes that could care less about the environment. As General Scales noted in his testimony, U.S. refining capacity would likely evaporate and move offshore–making America more, not less, dependent on foreign countries. Furthermore, since oil is a global commodity, as the price rises, foreign oil producers that wish America ill would still find ready buyers for their product. Thus, they would fill their coffers even as the U.S. becomes less competitive.

Countering the Consequences of Copenhagen

Advocates of an international climate treaty have little hope that a convention with stringent, binding, and enforceable emissions reduction targets will be signed in Copenhagen, but they have every intention in continuing to shape the provisions of a draft instrument that could constrain the ability of the U.S. to direct its own energy future–and ultimately look after the security of its citizens.

The U.S. should deal responsibly with the challenges of global climate change, but the road to Copenhagen is a dead end. Rather, Washington should seek an alternate path to ensure a future where America is a worldwide leader in the stewardship of the global environment, a champion for the advancement of freedom and justice, and an engine of sustainable growth. Specifically, the U.S. Government should:

• Ensure that any effort to reduce reliance on foreign oil is grounded in policies that are best for the economy. Reducing oil imports from unstable or unfriendly regimes should be done in a way that minimizes the economic cost to Americans. Policies such as raising taxes on gasoline while mandating or subsidizing expensive or unproven alternative fuels and vehicles lead to large costs with marginal–or even negative–results. The first steps in reducing reliance on foreign oil are to make full use of domestic petroleum reserves and to remove disincentives to investment in oil production from friendly nations. These should be coupled with efforts to encourage diversification away from petroleum, which will be best achieved not by government fiat but by the private sector-led development of alternatives that can compete in their own right. Domestically, the federal role should be limited to conducting basic research and removing regulatory and tax barriers that impede private-sector innovation. In addition, restrictions on international growth in alternatives, such as the tariffs that limit ethanol imports into the U.S., should be eliminated.
• Provide leadership for the international expansion of commercial nuclear energy. Nuclear energy is the only emissions-free energy source available today that can provide large amounts of energy. Unfortunately, regulatory barriers and protectionism stand in the way of the safe expansion of this technology. The U.S. could provide needed leadership by establishing a path forward that addresses these problems. While reforming its onerous regulatory regime and developing a workable system for nuclear waste management are domestic priorities, internationally, the U.S. must work to advance free and open markets. Moving the Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage forward is critical to this effort. Parties to the convention operate under common liability rules for nuclear activities. This is important to U.S. companies who do not enjoy the national liability protection that most foreign firms enjoy, thus putting them at a competitive disadvantage. While the U.S. has ratified the convention, additional nations must ratify before it comes into force. Once in force, U.S. companies would be better able to compete in overseas nuclear markets, which would advance both economic and environmental agendas.
• Use free markets to advance a green energy and environment agenda. Trade measures in carbon-control legislation may appear necessary for protecting U.S. competitiveness and promoting broader international participation in such schemes. However, in reality, such measures will likely create a more hostile trade environment that costs U.S. firms access to global markets. Rather than using trade policy as a weapon, America should keep markets open. Policymakers should maintain the integrity and freedom of global markets as a means to transfer clean technologies, keep international investment flowing, and promote economic growth and prosperity in the U.S. and around the world.

These measures would provide real security to the American people by not hamstringing the military’s ability to protect its citizens and ensuring sustainable growth based on clean and abundant green energy.

The true rate of unemployment for October 2009 may be 22.1 percent, not the 10.2 percent reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Jerome Corsi’s Red Alert reports.

Unemployment at 22.1 percent, if accurate, would be at numbers not seen since peak unemployment during the 1973 to 1975 recession.

Economist John Williams, publisher of ShadowStats.com, estimates that the peak of unemployment in nonfarm unemployment in the Great Depression of the 1930s would, by his methodology, have registered at 34 to 35 percent in 1933.

So, how does the Obama administration get away with reporting the lower unemployment percentage?

Corsi explained that the Clinton administration changed the way BLS calculates unemployment statistics by excluding “discouraged workers,” those who had given up looking for a job because there were no jobs to be found.

Since the Clinton years, discouraged workers looking for a job for more than one year are not counted as “unemployed” because they are considered to have dropped out of the labor force.

The BLS still includes in “U6 Unemployment” calculations short-term discouraged workers, as long as they have been looking for a job less than one year.

This definition permits the Obama administration to under-report “U3 unemployment” at 10.2 percent when real unemployment as calculated before the Clinton administration redefinition is twice that amount, Red Alert contends, and U6 unemployment lies somewhere in between.

These differences are illustrated in the following chart that Williams produces in the “Alternative Data” section of his website named “Shadow Government Statistics: Analysis Behind and Beyond Government Economic Reporting.”

(Illustration by shadowstats.com)

“The convenience is that by reporting unemployment at 10.2 percent instead of at 22.1 percent, the Obama administration can clearly continue advancing the argument the U.S. economy is in recovery and the recession is over, even if the truth belies those claims,” Corsi wrote.

Williams concludes that the economy is not recovering, but has been stimulated by excess liquidity placed into the financial system by the Federal Reserve keeping federal-funds rates at the historically low rate of zero, or near zero.

“Understanding that the real level of unemployment in October 2009 was closer to 22 percent than to the officially reported 10 percent is an important corrective,” Corsi wrote, “especially if we are to appreciate the extent to which a Dow at or above the 10,000 benchmark is nothing more than another Fed-created bubble.”

With millions of jobs outsourced to China and India under free-trade globalism, the dollar weakness that accompanies most recessions is not stimulative, he explained, largely because the U.S. has lost so many manufacturing jobs that are never returning to its shores.

“Truly, the only way the Fed can stimulate the economy is through creating bubbles generated by keeping interest rates artificially low,” Corsi wrote. “As I argued in ‘America For Sale: Fighting the New World Order, Surviving a Global Recession, and Preserving USA Sovereignty,’ the Bernanke stock-market bubble caused by keeping interest rates at zero is merely a repeat of the Greenspan housing bubble that was caused by keeping interest rates at 1 percent in 2003-2004.”

The housing bubble burst when interest rates began rising in late 2004 and peaked at just above 5 percent in mid-2006.

“The stock-market bubble will most certainly burst when interest rates rise, as they inevitably will,” Corsi wrote, “both to fight the increasing risk of hyperinflation and to maintain the needed incentive for foreign nations to lend the U.S. Treasury the hundreds of billions of dollars monthly that will be needed to float yet another $1 trillion Obama administration federal budget deficit in 2010.”

A provision in the House health-care bill sets up a stark choice for Democrats between the interests of younger voters and older ones.

The bill would limit how much insurers can vary premiums based on the age of the person buying the policy. The narrower the range, the lower the premiums for older people, a help to those who currently pay some of the highest rates for insurance and often need coverage the most. But such a limitation tends to raise premiums for younger folks, who are sometimes reluctant to buy coverage.

n the House bill, the ratio can only be as much as 2 to 1, meaning older people could pay no more than twice what the youngest customers are charged. Senate Democrats, who haven’t yet unveiled the bill that will go to the floor there, will have to decide whether to echo the House’s ratio or use a different one. Lobbyists say one possibility might be 3 to 1, the average of two earlier Senate bills. Currently, the range isn’t capped in most states and older people may pay five or six times as much.

t’s tough to project the exact impact of the new age ratio because the bills contain other provisions affecting premiums.

Still, a calculator on the Kaiser Family Foundation Web site gives a rough sense. It suggests that under the House’s 2-to-1 cap, a 20-year-old would pay $3,169 in annual premiums and a 60-year-old would pay $6,339 for comparable plans, if they both had incomes above the subsidy-eligible level. Under a bill passed by the Senate Finance Committee, which had a 4-to-1 age-rating ratio, the 20-year-old would pay $2,258 and the 60-year-old would pay $8,357.

The House bill also requires almost all Americans to carry health insurance or pay a fine. Republicans say the combined effect will be to make some young people buy expensive policies they don’t want.

“We are going to tell every young American who has decided that they don’t want to pay those premiums, they want to save up to get married or to buy a home, that, by golly, they are going to have to take insurance. And they are going to pay three to four times what they would under the current system because there is only a 2-to-1 ratio,” said Rep. Joe Barton (R., Texas) during the weekend House debate.

Democrats, who relied on the youth vote in their 2008 election victories, counter that the bill helps young people by allowing them to stay longer on their parents’ insurance plans and offering subsidies for coverage to lower-income Americans, many of whom are young people in low-paying jobs.

A spokeswoman for Rep. Henry Waxman (D., Calif.) chairman the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said the House bill will help level “the playing field so that regardless of age, gender, financial or health status, individuals and families are able to afford coverage.”

The impact of the premium-age ratio would be felt most directly by those buying their own health plans. Based on Congressional Budget Office projections, after 10 years, about 30 million people would be buying individual insurance under the House bill, roughly double the current figure.

Merlyn Lawrence, a 64-year-old retiree in Scottsdale, Ariz., pays around $230 a month for a high-deductible insurance plan she bought through eHealthInsurance.com. Living with her daughter and relying on her Social Security income for expenses, she has to dip into her savings to make the monthly payments and can’t always afford her prescriptions, she says. “At our age, we don’t have the option of a job and bringing in a monthly income,” she said. “Between that age of 50 and 65, I really feel like people need to be given a break.”

On the other end of the spectrum, Tyler Routson, 23, of Los Angeles, works as a runner for a recording studio and is forced to rely on his parents to help pay the premiums for his roughly $140-a-month health plan. Though he is willing to help subsidize older people’s costs as a “good Samaritan gesture,” he said, he is also financially stretched and hoping a health bill will bring down the price of his coverage. “I know very few people who are my age who have money to help a 50-year-old person,” he said.

The seniors’ lobby AARP has pushed for the narrower age-rating band, arguing that older people would otherwise be priced out of the insurance market. “Our overriding concern is affordability,” said John Rother, an executive vice president with the group.

Industry officials argue that if young people are asked to pay more, fewer of them will buy insurance, and many may opt instead to pay the penalty for being uninsured.

“That makes the premiums for everyone else increase,” said Alissa Fox, senior vice president of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association.

The 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team has spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle, helping restore essential services and escorting supply convoys.

Now they’re training for the same mission — with a twist — at home.

Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.

It is not the first time an active-duty unit has been tapped to help at home. In August 2005, for example, when Hurricane Katrina unleashed hell in Mississippi and Louisiana, several active-duty units were pulled from various posts and mobilized to those areas.

But this new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities.

After 1st BCT finishes its dwell-time mission, expectations are that another, as yet unnamed, active-duty brigade will take over and that the mission will be a permanent one.

“Right now, the response force requirement will be an enduring mission. How the [Defense Department] chooses to source that and whether or not they continue to assign them to NorthCom, that could change in the future,” said Army Col. Louis Vogler, chief of NorthCom future operations. “Now, the plan is to assign a force every year.”

The command is at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colo., but the soldiers with 1st BCT, who returned in April after 15 months in Iraq, will operate out of their home post at Fort Stewart, Ga., where they’ll be able to go to school, spend time with their families and train for their new homeland mission as well as the counterinsurgency mission in the war zones.

Stop-loss will not be in effect, so soldiers will be able to leave the Army or move to new assignments during the mission, and the operational tempo will be variable.

Don’t look for any extra time off, though. The at-home mission does not take the place of scheduled combat-zone deployments and will take place during the so-called dwell time a unit gets to reset and regenerate after a deployment.

The 1st of the 3rd is still scheduled to deploy to either Iraq or Afghanistan in early 2010, which means the soldiers will have been home a minimum of 20 months by the time they ship out.

In the meantime, they’ll learn new skills, use some of the ones they acquired in the war zone and more than likely will not be shot at while doing any of it.

They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack.

Training for homeland scenarios has already begun at Fort Stewart and includes specialty tasks such as knowing how to use the “jaws of life” to extract a person from a mangled vehicle; extra medical training for a CBRNE incident; and working with U.S. Forestry Service experts on how to go in with chainsaws and cut and clear trees to clear a road or area.

The 1st BCT’s soldiers also will learn how to use “the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded,” 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.

The package is for use only in war-zone operations, not for any domestic purpose.

“It’s a new modular package of nonlethal capabilities that they’re fielding. They’ve been using pieces of it in Iraq, but this is the first time that these modules were consolidated and this package fielded, and because of this mission we’re undertaking we were the first to get it.”

The package includes equipment to stand up a hasty road block; spike strips for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic; shields and batons; and, beanbag bullets.

“I was the first guy in the brigade to get Tasered,” said Cloutier, describing the experience as “your worst muscle cramp ever — times 10 throughout your whole body.

“I’m not a small guy, I weigh 230 pounds … it put me on my knees in seconds.”

The brigade will not change its name, but the force will be known for the next year as a CBRNE Consequence Management Response Force, or CCMRF (pronounced “sea-smurf”).

“I can’t think of a more noble mission than this,” said Cloutier, who took command in July. “We’ve been all over the world during this time of conflict, but now our mission is to take care of citizens at home … and depending on where an event occurred, you’re going home to take care of your home town, your loved ones.”

While soldiers’ combat training is applicable, he said, some nuances don’t apply.

“If we go in, we’re going in to help American citizens on American soil, to save lives, provide critical life support, help clear debris, restore normalcy and support whatever local agencies need us to do, so it’s kind of a different role,” said Cloutier, who, as the division operations officer on the last rotation, learned of the homeland mission a few months ago while they were still in Iraq.

Some brigade elements will be on call around the clock, during which time they’ll do their regular marksmanship, gunnery and other deployment training. That’s because the unit will continue to train and reset for the next deployment, even as it serves in its CCMRF mission.

Should personnel be needed at an earthquake in California, for example, all or part of the brigade could be scrambled there, depending on the extent of the need and the specialties involved.

Other branches included

The active Army’s new dwell-time mission is part of a NorthCom and DOD response package.

Active-duty soldiers will be part of a force that includes elements from other military branches and dedicated National Guard Weapons of Mass Destruction-Civil Support Teams.

A final mission rehearsal exercise is scheduled for mid-September at Fort Stewart and will be run by Joint Task Force Civil Support, a unit based out of Fort Monroe, Va., that will coordinate and evaluate the interservice event.

In addition to 1st BCT, other Army units will take part in the two-week training exercise, including elements of the 1st Medical Brigade out of Fort Hood, Texas, and the 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade from Fort Bragg, N.C.

There also will be Air Force engineer and medical units, the Marine Corps Chemical, Biological Initial Reaction Force, a Navy weather team and members of the Defense Logistics Agency and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

One of the things Vogler said they’ll be looking at is communications capabilities between the services.

“It is a concern, and we’re trying to check that and one of the ways we do that is by having these sorts of exercises. Leading up to this, we are going to rehearse and set up some of the communications systems to make sure we have interoperability,” he said.

“I don’t know what America’s overall plan is — I just know that 24 hours a day, seven days a week, there are soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines that are standing by to come and help if they’re called,” Cloutier said. “It makes me feel good as an American to know that my country has dedicated a force to come in and help the people at home.”

———

Correction:

A non-lethal crowd control package fielded to 1st Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, described in the original version of this story, is intended for use on deployments to the war zone, not in the U.S., as previously stated.

The bailout is hurting–not helping–employment.

The White House announced last week that the $787 billion stimulus package has “saved or created” more than 1 million jobs.

Yet on Friday we learned that unemployment increased to 10.2%, and the number of unemployed Americans rose by 558,000 in October. If you factor in workers who gave up looking or settled for a part-time job, the real unemployment rate–what’s known as U6–is an astounding 17.5%.

Look out now for even more claims about “saved or created” jobs from the Obama administration.

As numerous economists have explained, there is no academic or empirical basis for the category of “jobs saved.”

Veronique de Rugy of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University says, “no agency–not the Labor Department, not the Treasury, not the Bureau of Labor Statistics–actually calculates ‘jobs saved.’ ”

Dr. Allan Meltzer of Carnegie Mellon University adds, “One can search economic textbooks forever without finding a concept called ‘jobs saved.’ It doesn’t exist for good reason: How can anyone know that his or her job has been saved?”

The fact is, there is no guarantee that the government actually creates a job when it spends stimulus money. There is no way of knowing whether a worker or firm that is engaged in a stimulus-related activity would have been idle or engaged in some alternative activity. But we do know that as the recovery picks up, individuals engaged in government activity will be unavailable for more productive private activity.

That means that the recovery will have trouble truly lifting off if many of our workers have been committed to questionable make-work projects concocted by Speaker Pelosi and President Obama. A Keynesian might be happy to have government workers digging holes and filling them in, but workers occupied in that manner cannot, at the same time, return to the factory floor. The higher the number of such dislocated workers, the higher the policy challenge going forward.

So if the Obama administration is just going to make up formulations like “saved or created” that have no basis in economics, let us offer our own formulation that is a far more accurate characterization of our economic challenges since the enactment of President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package, even if economists currently don’t use this measure.

And that is, we have seen more than 4 million jobs “lost and dislocated” since President Obama and the Democratic Congress enacted the stimulus package in February.

This is a much easier formulation to understand.

You begin with the increase in the number of unemployed Americans since the stimulus was passed in February as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That number is 3.2 million, which represents the jobs that have actually been lost since the stimulus package was enacted.

Then, to have a clear sense of the liabilities created by Obama’s misguided policies, we should add to our “jobs lost” number an estimate of private workers who have been “dislocated” by the government. Since stimulus actions are meant to be temporary, knowing how many workers have been “dislocated” is essential to forming a realistic long-run economic outlook. The more dislocated workers that Obama creates today, the higher the number of workers that will have to eventually be reabsorbed by the private sector tomorrow when the stimulus winds down.

So what figure should we use for the number of “dislocated” jobs since the stimulus program was enacted? Thankfully, the White House has, perhaps inadvertently, provided us with an estimate. When the White House says that jobs have been “saved or created” by the stimulus program, then we should say that this is the number of jobs “dislocated” by the stimulus program.

So, using current figures, adding the number of actual jobs lost since February (3.2 million) to the number of jobs that the Obama administration says that they have “saved or created” since February (1 million) means that the economy has “lost and dislocated” more than 4 million jobs since President Obama signed his $787 billion stimulus package.

This “lost and dislocated” formulation is a much more honest assessment of where we are as a country when it comes to understanding job creation, unemployment and the economic challenges ahead under the so-called stimulus package.

If it’s not, then the White House should at least explain how “saved or created” is more accurate.

The bailout is hurting–not helping–employment.

The White House announced last week that the $787 billion stimulus package has “saved or created” more than 1 million jobs.

Yet on Friday we learned that unemployment increased to 10.2%, and the number of unemployed Americans rose by 558,000 in October. If you factor in workers who gave up looking or settled for a part-time job, the real unemployment rate–what’s known as U6–is an astounding 17.5%.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzwTXaii3fs

Mark Levin speaks to crowd assembled on Capitol hill for House Call Rally Nov. 5, 2009.

A warning that the new swine flu jab is linked to a deadly nerve disease has been sent by the Government to senior neurologists in a confidential letter.

The letter from the Health Protection Agency, the official body that oversees public health, has been leaked to The Mail on Sunday, leading to demands to know why the information has not been given to the public before the vaccination of millions of people, including children, begins.

It tells the neurologists that they must be alert for an increase in a brain disorder called Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS), which could be triggered by the vaccine.

GBS attacks the lining of the nerves, causing paralysis and inability to breathe, and can be fatal.

The letter, sent to about 600 neurologists on July 29, is the first sign that there is concern at the highest levels that the vaccine itself could cause serious complications.

It refers to the use of a similar swine flu vaccine in the United States in 1976 when:

• More people died from the vaccination than from swine flu.
• 500 cases of GBS were detected.
• The vaccine may have increased the risk of contracting GBS by eight times.
• The vaccine was withdrawn after just ten weeks when the link with GBS became clear.
• The US Government was forced to pay out millions of dollars to those affected.

Concerns have already been raised that the new vaccine has not been sufficiently tested and that the effects, especially on children, are unknown.

It is being developed by pharmaceutical companies and will be given to about 13million people during the first wave of immunisation, expected to start in October.

Top priority will be given to everyone aged six months to 65 with an underlying health problem, pregnant women and health professionals.

The British Neurological Surveillance Unit (BNSU), part of the British Association of Neurologists, has been asked to monitor closely any cases of GBS as the vaccine is rolled out.

One senior neurologist said last night: ‘I would not have the swine
flu jab because of the GBS risk.’

There are concerns that there could be a repeat of what became known as the ‘1976 debacle’ in the US, where a swine flu vaccine killed 25 people – more than the virus itself.

A mass vaccination was given the go-ahead by President Gerald Ford because scientists believed that the swine flu strain was similar to the one responsible for the 1918-19 pandemic, which killed half a million Americans and 20million people worldwide.

The swine flu vaccine being offered to children has not been tested on infants

Within days, symptoms of GBS were reported among those who had been immunised and 25 people died from respiratory failure after severe paralysis. One in 80,000 people came down with the condition. In contrast, just one person died of swine flu.

More than 40million Americans had received the vaccine by the time the programme was stopped after ten weeks. The US Government paid out millions of dollars in compensation to those affected.

The swine flu virus in the new vaccine is a slightly different strain from the 1976 virus, but the possibility of an increased incidence of GBS remains a concern.

Shadow health spokesman Mike Penning said last night: ‘The last thing we want is secret letters handed around experts within the NHS. We need a vaccine but we also need to know about potential risks.

‘Our job is to make sure that the public knows what’s going on. Why
is the Government not being open about this? It’s also very worrying if GPs, who will be administering the vaccine, aren’t being warned.’

Two letters were posted together to neurologists advising them of the concerns. The first, dated July 29, was written by Professor Elizabeth Miller, head of the HPA’s Immunisation Department.

It says: ‘The vaccines used to combat an expected swine influenza pandemic in 1976 were shown to be associated with GBS and were withdrawn from use.

‘GBS has been identified as a condition needing enhanced surveillance when the swine flu vaccines are rolled out.

‘Reporting every case of GBS irrespective of vaccination or disease history is essential for conducting robust epidemiological analyses capable of identifying whether there is an increased risk of GBS in defined time periods after vaccination, or after influenza itself, compared with the background risk.’

The second letter, dated July 27, is from the Association of British Neurologists and is written by Dr Rustam Al-Shahi Salman, chair of its surveillance unit, and Professor Patrick Chinnery, chair of its clinical research committee.

Halted: The 1976 US swine flu campaign

It says: ‘Traditionally, the BNSU has monitored rare diseases for long periods of time. However, the swine influenza (H1N1) pandemic has overtaken us and we need every member’s involvement with a new BNSU survey of Guillain-Barre Syndrome that will start on August 1 and run for approximately nine months.

‘Following the 1976 programme of vaccination against swine influenza in the US, a retrospective study found a possible eight-fold increase in the incidence of GBS.

‘Active prospective ascertainment of every case of GBS in the UK is required. Please tell BNSU about every case.

‘You will have seen Press coverage describing the Government’s concern about releasing a vaccine of unknown safety.’

If there are signs of a rise in GBS after the vaccination programme begins, the Government could decide to halt it.

GBS attacks the lining of the nerves, leaving them unable to transmit signals to muscles effectively.

It can cause partial paralysis and mostly affects the hands and feet. In serious cases, patients need to be kept on a ventilator, but it can be fatal.

Death is caused by paralysis of the respiratory system, causing the victim to suffocate.
It is not known exactly what causes GBS and research on the subject has been inconclusive.

However, it is thought that one in a million people who have a seasonal flu vaccination could be at risk and it has also been linked to people recovering from a bout of flu of any sort.

The HPA said it was part of the Government’s pandemic plan to monitor GBS cases in the event of a mass vaccination campaign, regardless of the strain of flu involved.
But vaccine experts warned that the letters proved the programme was a ‘guinea-pig trial’.

Dr Tom Jefferson, co-ordinator of the vaccines section of the influential Cochrane Collaboration, an independent group that reviews research, said: ‘New vaccines never behave in the way you expect them to. It may be that there is a link to GBS, which is certainly not something I would wish on anybody.

‘But it could end up being anything because one of the additives in one of the vaccines is a substance called squalene, and none of the studies we’ve extracted have any research on it at all.’

He said squalene, a naturally occurring enzyme, could potentially cause so-far-undiscovered side effects.

Jackie Fletcher, founder of vaccine support group Jabs, said: ‘The Government would not be anticipating this if they didn’t think there was a connection. What we’ve got is a massive guinea-pig trial.’

Professor Chinnery said: ‘During the last swine flu pandemic, it was observed that there was an increased frequency of cases of GBS. No one knows whether it was the virus or the vaccine that caused this.

‘The purpose of the survey is for us to assess rapidly whether there is an increase in the frequency of GBS when the vaccine is released in the UK. It also increases consultants’ awareness of the condition.

Panic over? The number of swine flu cases has fallen sharply in the past few weeks

‘This is a belt-and-braces approach to safety and is not something people should be substantially worried about as it’s a rare condition.’

If neurologists do identify a case of GBS, it will be logged on a central database.

Details about patients, including blood samples, will be collected and monitored by the HPA.

It is hoped this will help scientists establish why some people develop the condition and whether it is directly related to the vaccine.

But some question why there needs to be a vaccine, given the risks. Dr Richard Halvorsen, author of The Truth About Vaccines, said: ‘For people with serious underlying health problems, the risk of dying from swine flu is probably greater than the risk of side effects from the vaccine.

‘But it would be tragic if we repeated the US example and ended up with more casualties from the jabs.

‘I applaud the Government for recognising the risk but in most cases this is a mild virus which needs a few days in bed. I’d question why we need a vaccine at all.’

Professor Miller at the HPA said: ‘This monitoring system activates pandemic plans that have been in place for a number of years. We’ll be able to get information on whether a patient has had a prior influenza illness and will look at whether influenza itself is linked to GBS.

‘We are not expecting a link to the vaccine but a link to disease, which would make having the vaccine even more important.’

The UK’s medicines watchdog, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, is already monitoring reported side effects from Tamiflu and Relenza and it is set to extend that surveillance to the vaccine.

A Department of Health spokesperson said: ‘The European Medicines Agency has strict processes in place for licensing pandemic vaccines.

‘In preparing for a pandemic, appropriate trials to assess safety and the immune responses have been carried out on vaccines very similar to the swine flu vaccine. The vaccines have been shown to have a good safety profile.

‘It is extremely irresponsible to suggest that the UK would use a vaccine without careful consideration of safety issues. The UK has one of the most successful immunisation programmes in the world.’

When Hilary Wilkinson woke up with muscle weakness in her left arm and difficulty breathing, doctors initially put it down to a stroke.

Victim: Hilary Wilkinson spent three months in hospital after she was diagnosed with Guillain-Barre SyndromeBut within hours, she was on a ventilator in intensive care after being diagnosed with Guillain-Barre Syndrome.

She spent three months in hospital and had to learn how to talk and walk again. But at times, when she was being fed through a drip and needed a tracheotomy just to breathe, she doubted whether she would survive.

The mother of two, 57, from Maryport, Cumbria, had been in good health until she developed a chest infection in March 2006. She gradually became so weak she could not walk downstairs.

Doctors did not diagnose Guillain-Barre until her condition worsened in hospital and tests showed her reflexes slowing down. It is impossible for doctors to know how she contracted the disorder, although it is thought to be linked to some infections.

Mrs Wilkinson said: ‘It was very scary. I couldn’t eat and I couldn’t speak. My arms and feet had no strength and breathing was hard.

I was treated with immunoglobulin, which are proteins found in blood, to stop damage to my nerves. After ten days, I still couldn’t speak and had to mime to nurses or my family.

‘It was absolutely horrendous and I had no idea whether I would get through it. You reach very dark moments at such times and wonder how long it can last.

But I’m a very determined person and I had lots of support.’

After three weeks, she was transferred to a neurological ward, where she had an MRI scan and nerve tests to assess the extent of the damage.

Still unable to speak and in a wheelchair, Mrs Wilkinson eventually began gruelling physiotherapy to improve her muscle strength and movement but it was exhausting and painful.

Three years later, she is almost fully recovered. She can now walk for several miles at a time, has been abroad and carries out voluntary work for a GBS Support Group helpline.

She said: ‘It makes me feel wary that the Government is rolling out this vaccine without any clear idea of the GBS risk, if any. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone and it certainly changed my life.

‘I’m frightened to have the swine flu vaccine if this might happen again – it’s a frightening illness and I think more research needs to be done on the effect of the vaccine.’

Hotline staff given access to confidential records

Confidential NHS staff records and disciplinary complaints could be accessed by hundreds of workers manning the Government’s special swine flu hotline.

They were able to browse through a database of emails containing doctors’ and nurses’ National Insurance numbers, home addresses, dates of birth, mobile phone numbers and scanned passport pages – all details that could be used fraudulently.

And private and confidential complaints sent by hospitals about temporary medical staff – some of whom were named – were also made available to the call-centre workers, who were given a special password to log in to an internal NHS website.

It could be a breach of the Data Protection Act.

The hotline staff work for NHS Professionals, which was set up using taxpayers’ money to employ temporary medical and administrative staff for the health service.

The not-for-profit company runs two of the Government’s swine flu call centres – with 300 staff in Farnborough, Hampshire, and 900 in Watford, Hertfordshire.

Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley described the revelations as ‘disturbing’.

Anne Mitchell, a spokeswoman for Unison, said: ‘There’s no excuse for such a fundamental breach of personal security. Action needs to be taken as soon as possible to make sure this does not happen again.’

A spokeswoman for NHS Professionals would not confirm whether access to the confidential files had been granted.

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