"Time of The Season" (opens in separate window)

science is not to be trusted

friday, march 24st, 2023

Science is probably not what you think it is, and that’s okay.

As we can still love our parents when we stop seeing them as infallible God-like “adults” and learn about their full humanity, we see science as a messy process and still love it as beautiful and capable of revolutionizing our society.

Most people learn about science in school as a compendium of facts about the universe. Heat causes liquids to boil and turn into gases. Electric currents can move along a copper wire. DNA encodes the information that makes living organisms what they are.

While many of those facts are true (or more accurately, there is no evidence yet giving reason to doubt them), viewing science as an encyclopedia is misleading; it prevents the public from interfacing with the front-lines of science, and thereby inhibits the ability of science to inform the public in a time of crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic.

Science is anything but constant and monolithic. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the public saw inside the sausage factory of modern science and puked. Did masks work, or did they not? Were school closures effective at saving lives or not? Did vaccines provide long-lasting protection against infection? Did SARS-CoV-2 emerge in a lab? What was sold to the public as The Science one day became misinformation the next, and vice versa.

Many members of the public are understandably disoriented at best, revolted at worst. “Distrust” in science skyrocketed among conservatives and “trust” in science rose among liberals. By presenting science as a monolithic belief system, a compendium of facts to be trusted and not questioned, we created a science-policy interface that policed emerging science as misinformation and misled the public about the nature of science itself, all but guaranteeing a partisan response by prohibiting public participation and engagement in the scientific process.

The truth is easy to say: scientists working on the front-lines of science hold different views. We disagree. We read some papers and say “Cool! I want to take this idea to the next level.” We read other papers, say “This is garbage!!!” and consider whether it’s worth the time and effort to publish the reasons for our distaste. In the process of thousands of people in any one niche field of science reading papers, agreeing with some and disagreeing with others, replicating some results and disproving others, the collective body of knowledge slowly whittles down to a set of reproducible experiments and theories that have yet to be disproven. The long arc of science bends towards truth, but only if we preserve the integrity of the process by which we disagree and discuss evidence.

Blindsight is 20/20.

Throughout COVID-19, there was considerable effort encouraging people to “follow the science.” The mantra, “Follow the science,” was often weaponized in public discourse to suggest “The Science” implied one side’s policies were “right” and the other side’s policies were “wrong.” In reality, throughout the pandemic scientists read the literature, had different assessments of every one paper, and engaged in science by planning and publishing their next work. Whoever came up with “Follow the Science” greatly underserved the public, and we further misrepresent science by asking whether or not folk “trust” science.

Science is not a belief system, so it’s not something to be trusted. Science is a social process which anyone can join, it is a conversation with evidence to be examined, discussed, questioned, and tested. Science is not limited to Ivory Towers and people with PhDs. Anyone, no matter how anonymous or weird they are (in our idiosyncratic views of “weird”), can examine a paper, question some results, discuss them, and change our perspectives. Or at least, that’s how it should be.

A personal example of open, public participation in science occurred in some of my own work during the COVID-19 pandemic. In April 2020, Justin Silverman, Nathaniel Hupert, and I suspected confirmed US COVID cases were undercounting the true extent of the pandemic. We counted the number of patients visiting medical providers with influenza-like illness (ILI) in March during previous years and compared it to the number of patients with ILI in March of 2020. We found a significantly higher number of patients with flu-like symptoms in March 2020 than previous years. We combined the number of ILI patients per provider with the number of providers in each state to estimate of the number of ILI patients in each state. We estimated over 20 million people could have been infected across the US in March 2020. More infections, with the same number of deaths, meant a lower probability of dying given infection – this potential good news could dramatically change how we forecasted upcoming COVID-19 surges across the US. People would still die, but maybe medical systems and society would not collapse in states like South Dakota or Florida, where managers opted out of containment policies.

We shared our pre-print on Twitter, it got picked up by data visualization experts at The Economist, and overnight our notifications exploded. Tens of thousands of people read our abstract, and it would’ve been easier to drink out of a firehose than to make sense of that mayhem at that scale. Back in April 2020, saying that COVID might not be as bad as previous estimates (e.g. >1 percent infection fatality rates) was seen by many scientists as equivalent to saying “COVID is a hoax” but, to me, as a statistician, it was important to share estimates and not bias them based on who said what is a hoax.

Many scientists clamored rather unconstructively, saying our paper was garbage, not for any real reason but, rather, because they thought it was “dangerous” or upsetting to public health policy (specifically, the public health policies they preferred – that’s not quite a scientific judgement). We looked out for critiques, and found only critics, until suddenly a person named Seth Stevens-Davidowitz chimed in with a comment deep inside a thicket of threads. Seth’s comment was a good comment.

Seth was not anyone we knew, nor did he present himself as an epidemiologist, nor were we aware of any fancy pedigree. However, Seth pointed out that our approach for scaling up ILI patients per-provider to a state-level, when applied to the whole country, implied many more patients visited the hospital across the US in a year than other reliable measurements suggest. Our results implied too many patients, and we needed to reconcile this. Technically we didn’t “need” to reconcile this – maybe we could’ve squeaked past peer reviewers, since Seth’s comment didn’t go viral, but we believed Seth was right and we were wrong so we felt an ethical obligation to correct our work in light of Seth’s good point.

We didn’t ignore Seth nor tell Seth he was unqualified, we didn’t block Seth on Twitter and assert that we were the experts. In fact, Seth didn’t even need to be Seth Stevens-Davidowitz for us to hear the soundness of his point – if an account named RoboCat1984 made the same point, we would’ve heard it all the same, because it was a good point. As scientists, my colleagues and I were eager to keep open minds.

We ultimately agreed with Seth. We realized that the providers giving data to the CDC tended to be large medical providers, so we adjusted our method to scale up ILI visits to the state level in a way that implied our total patients in the US equaled the total patients in the US estimated by other, more reliable methods. Our final paper estimated over 8 million people were infected – still a lot more than the 100,000 cases at the time. Some scientists hated us still. Some said our “flip-flopping” showed how bad we were at science, or that we were dishonest and trying to support Donald Trump. For me, that was just another day in science. We were trying our best, and staying humble, incorporating feedback from smart randos on Twitter who made good points.

I stayed involved with COVID-19 forecasting all the way through BA.5, with many other stories I could tell you, but there’s a more important story to focus on today. After forecasting medical demand, I returned to my pre-COVID roots of pathogen spillover to study the origins of SARS-CoV-2, feeling rather accomplished in the battles over COVID outbreak forecasting like King Richard returning from the Crusades. I expected calm reading by the fire in my castle. I read the literature claiming a lab-origin of SARS-CoV-2 is “impossible” or “implausible” or “improbable,” that the furin cleavage site insertion is “illogical,” that evidence for a zoonotic origin was “dispositive,” and, despite initially believing a zoonotic origin, I had reasons to believe all of that work was garbage.

For example, take Worobey et al.’s analysis of early case data claiming to have found “dispositive” evidence that SARS-CoV-2 originated in the wet market. The paper was entirely within my skillset, and I immediately felt its conclusions were unsound. I believe, as many others have detailed, that the spatial locations of early case data could not determine the origin of an outbreak because (1) the spatial biases in how we collect early cases are impossible to correct for absent transparent background surveillance systems we don’t have in Wuhan (2) the data Worobey at al. used excluded earlier cases with no ties to the wet market, (3) the spatial smoothing of environmental testing misrepresented the relevant granularity, such as surfaces under animal traders being as likely to test positive as surfaces under vegetable traders, (4) Gao et al. tested animals in the wet market and not one animal tested positive, (5) we can’t blindly trust China to provide accurate, unbiased data given the possibility unbiased data, under a lab origin, would reveal their fault in the pandemic, and more reasons. Despite not just Twitter objections but published papers and many pre-prints, the authors have not addressed any of these reasons, nor have they made amends in the community for using the very overconfident “dispositive” language. Instead, Worobey himself continues broadcasting his work without acknowledging limitations or representing the objections of many scientists like myself. Seth would surely be ignored by this crew, no matter how good his point was.

I read this group’s other preprint – Pekar et al. – and that paper, too, fell within my wheelhouse. That paper, too, has such severe methodological limitations that I could have zero confidence in the conclusions. You simply cannot conclude the origins of a virus based on the structure of the virus’ evolutionary tree, certainly not with the models they used to model how viral evolutionary trees grow in early outbreaks, and there’s even strong evidence suggesting the empirical premise – their tree itself – was wrong. I wrote the authors private emails raising my concerns, and they never wrote back.

So, I tweeted about it and eventually colleagues and I wrote a paper detailing our reasoning. We shared the paper on Twitter, and the authors attacked us by saying we weren’t “The Experts.” Many proceeded to block me and there was hilarious shit-talking aplenty. With my King Richard armor from years in the COVID warzone, these tweets bounced off me like bullets off of Superman.

Just another day in science.

In my scientific due diligence on the origins question, I read careful assessments of the other theory about a lab origin. Lab-origin assessments came from mostly anonymous accounts who feared being called racist conspiracy-theorists by the high-follower accounts policing this issue on Twitter (including some working with fact-checkers to call lab-origin claims “misinformation!”), and a handful of brave, exceedingly brilliant non-anonymous people with obscure institutional affiliations and who, it seems, have yet to be found by the world. Diamonds of scientific human capital in the rough, so to speak, at least that’s my assessment from talking with these people. Some lab origin possibilities were unfounded, some were loony, and some were indeed racist, yet it’s my job as a scientist to find the signal in the noise and make it known.

So, I studied the evidence suggesting SARS-CoV-2 emerged from a lab and the many scenarios being considered for a research-related origin.

I saw a significant lack of zoonotic evidence that is easy to obtain, evidence that would reject a lab origin, evidence that we even looked for yet couldn’t find. Technically, we still don’t *know* there are no aliens on the moon, or even here on Earth, but we’ve looked for them with methods that should be able to find them if they’re there, and we haven’t found them so they’re probably neither here nor on the moon. Same with the missing zoonotic evidence. In addition to the missing zoonotic evidence, I found the evidence suggesting a lab origin to be very compelling. Most compelling was the constellation of evidence surrounding the DEFUSE grant proposing to insert a human-optimized furin cleavage site in a SARS-CoV infectious clone in Wuhan. Scientists believing SARS-CoV-2 arose from a lab pointed out that, exactly as DEFUSE spelled out in 2018, SARS-CoV-2 emerged in Wuhan with a human-optimized furin cleavage site.

What are the odds of that?

Quite low, it turns out. If we had the DEFUSE grant in-hand in January 2020, when the first SARS-CoV-2 genome was released from Wuhan, we could immediately see the FCS and its human-optimized codon. The odds of such a human-optimized FCS in a SARS-CoV in Wuhan alone (i.e. excluding the infectious clone part) is around 1 in 30 million or so.

However, the puzzle wasn’t complete. Additional evidence could change that number.

Was there any evidence SARS-CoV-2 was an infectious clone? In seeking answers on this issue, I stumbled across tweets by Valentin Bruttel and Tony VanDongen, two internet randos who I’d never heard of before, yet these two random people were evidently quite intelligent and making truly brilliant points. Valentin’s Avatar looked like it could be the front of a heavy metal album, and Tony’s anonymous-looking avatar of his eye and part of a mask would strike fear in the hearts of lesser men. However, Valentin and Tony were being kind and saying smart things, so I listened.

They noticed that infectious clones are commonly assembled with a known method called “type II directional assembly,” and they visually observed that SARS-CoV-2 appears to have the fingerprint of that exact method. I got in touch with Valentin and Tony and we collaborated to turn this evidence into a paper, with them being awesome bioengineers and me helping quantify the odds of seeing such strong evidence of infectious cloning in a wild coronavirus.

We wrote our analysis up in a paper, I wrote a pop-science article explaining what we found, and we tried to use careful language saying SARS-CoV-2’s restriction map is “consistent with” an infectious clone. Language matters a lot in science – we did not say SARS-CoV-2 “is” an infectious clone nor that it “disproves” a natural origin, yet it does suggest a theory that SARS-CoV-2 has a synthetic origin, a theory we encourage people to test, and we believe SARS-CoV-2 is a reverse genetics system, or basically an IKEA virus (whether natural or not).

The Economist picked up the story, and the whole world erupted into battle once again. The Economist article and the Telegraph beautifully document the intensity of scientific discourse on this topic. The language was colorful, to put it delicately. To the best of our ability, we responded kindly to the rather hostile discourse by clarifying who we are and what our intentions are.

We listened through the rancor, as I’d done previously to find Seth’s insight on the ILI paper, and we felt this global melee of discourse uncovered some valid points for future research. We acknowledge the scientists who brought up those good points, yet we also felt those points don’t undermine our results inasmuch as they provide additional hypotheses for alternative explanations and future research. Science goes on! After drinking the firehose of rowdy rhetoric and finding some needles of insight in the haystack of hate, we debriefed on this global engagement in a statement that we believe our synthetic origin theory of SARS-CoV-2 still stands.

Another day in science.

As someone who studied and forecasted spillover pre-COVID, my scientific journey has led me to believe SARS-CoV-2 most likely originated in a lab, and the most important piece of evidence contextualizing the rest of evidence suggesting a lab origin is the DEFUSE grant. If you were forecasting the genomic and geographic features of a SARS CoV pandemic using pre-COVID methods, I estimate a roughly 1 in 56 billion chance of a SARS-CoV emerging in Wuhan with such a human-optimized furin cleavage site & type II restriction map with such strong resemblance of an infectious clone.

If you were forecasting the genomic and geographic features of a lab leak from someone conducting the work in the DEFUSE grant, the virus would emerge in Wuhan and look exactly like SARS-CoV-2 in all of these ways in which SARS-CoV-2 is anomalous among natural coronaviruses. The weight of this evidence is overwhelming. I’ve been around the block and seen a lot of arguments in my days in science, I’ve seen a lot of unresolved issues, yet I have never seen such strong evidence so cavalierly dismissed as zoonotic origin proponents are doing when they say “all the evidence” suggests a zoonotic origin and “no evidence” exists for a lab origin.

Science should not be trusted in general, but we need to be especially diligent in acknowledging science as suspect when the science of the matter concerns the possibility that scientists, health science funders, and managers overseeing science in labs in Wuhan, played a role in killing 18 million people. Such an investigation is ripe with conflicts of interest and reputational risks, as prior to a science-caused accident there will be many coteries of scientists who played some role in encouraging, conducting, funding, and/or overseeing the research that caused harm.

Yet, despite the massive body of evidence making a spillover-scientist like me believe SARS-CoV-2 did not spillover, the zoonotic origin proponents continue to use their media access to broadcast their papers without giving some time or fair consideration to objections to their papers. Rather than engage with the public, they block any scientist, let alone member of the public, who disagrees with them. They claim they, alone, are The Experts, and when someone raises an objection they simply talk louder to more media outlets and more followers. They greatly misrepresent the evidence of the matter in outlets as widely read as the Washington Post and the LA Times, corrupting the interface between science and society, misrepresenting both science as a collective process with multitudinous views, and repeatedly misrepresenting in a reliably biased way the facts of the matter during ongoing congressional investigations. The authors repeatedly claim to be summarizing “all the evidence,” yet nowhere do they discuss the severe, mathematically provable limitations of their work, the objections of other scientists they’ve blocked, or the many pieces of evidence suggesting a lab origin.

Nowhere in “all the evidence” do they mention DEFUSE or the many features of SARS-CoV-2 shockingly consistent with DEFUSE.

Yet, they want the public to trust them, to follow their science.

To me, these scientists’ promulgation of their flawed work and their willful (or oblivious? which is worse?) biased exclusion or misrepresentation of the evidence of a lab origin is one of the worst research ethics violations in human history that I am aware of, second only to creating the virus itself. There is the crime, and there is the coverup putting media-grabbing scientists who misrepresent the facts of the matter in league with the researchers who conducted the work on CoVs in Wuhan and refuse to share their lab notebooks or databases. These scientists are asserting themselves as authorities while brushing aside credible objections to their work irrespective of who raises them. In the middle of congressional investigations on SARS-CoV-2 origins, these scientists are writing op-eds that mislead the public and managers on the probable research-related cause of over 18 million deaths worldwide, using their expertise to obfuscate an historic truth and obstruct the investigations we need to make our world safe from dangerous research.

My scientific journey studying SARS-CoV-2 origins has led me believe that a small coterie of scientists are, in fact, responsible for creating SARS-CoV-2 in a lab. They, their funders, and many scientists connected with them and the funders, and many scientists who championed doing this risky research are all reliably abusing their status as experts to misrepresent facts of the matter. The researchers studying CoVs in Wuhan are refusing to share their research. Peter Dazsak refused to share his DEFUSE grant or admit conflicts of interest of working on CoVs with labs in Wuhan when writing letters to the Lancet calling lab-origin theories “conspiracy theories,” Funders at NIH, NIAID, and the Wellcome Trust prompted, edited, and pushed a paper claiming baselessly with overconfident language that lab-origin theories are “improbable” or “implausible.”

As recently as yesterday, and during our desperately needed congressional investigations on SARS-CoV-2 origins, this clique of scientists is still running media campaigns claiming “all of the evidence” suggests a natural origin without ever mentioning DEFUSE. The relationship between science and society is a delicate one, and it’s one we’re still figuring out, yet clearly something is wrong with this picture. It is beyond unprofessional and unethical for scientists to run mass-media campaigns that misrepresent the evidence of the matter during Congressional investigations into the possibility that the scientists they are connected with created a virus that killed three times more people than the Holocaust. Assertions that they are experts to be followed misrepresents science and its consultations (not leadership) of society, and their efforts to obstruct investigations into their own syndicate should be seen as comparable to oil companies muddying the science about climate change, or tobacco companies muddying the science about lung cancer. Scientists who staked their reputations to risky research that likely led to millions of deaths are today muddying science itself.

Science should not be trusted. I say this as a scientist. Science has always been a rebellious act, a foray into battle with narratives that be. Richard Feynman described science as “belief in the ignorance of experts.” Science is not about the answers, per se, it’s about questioning the answers and trying to disprove the theory du jour, it’s about the longer-arc of the social process by which we share evidence and evaluate competing ideas. In times of crisis, science is not to be followed – it is to be examined, discussed, questioned and, for managers, incorporated alongside myriad other factors such as anthropological variation in folks’ beliefs, capacities, and wills to act.

While we learn about science in school as an encyclopedia of facts, the reality is that science is an epistemological war zone with ground rules, and we’re continually updating those ground rules as we go. The ground rules need to be revisited in light of the probable lab origin of SARS-CoV-2 and the actions of many scientists misrepresenting the evidence of the matter during WHO and Congressional investigations of a potentially science-related catastrophe.

There is a high likelihood that scientists amidst us, who fought beside us in this epistemological war zone, in a frenzied rush to get funding and fame, created a virus that leaked from a lab in Wuhan and resulted in over 18 million people dead, over 60 million extra people facing acute hunger, over 100 million kids thrown into multidimensional poverty, and an endemic curse of outbreak cycles that will infect our kids, our grandkids, and every generation as long as contemporary science can foresee.

The gravity of the situation should make all of our hearts sink. It should lead us to have a moment of silence every day. Instead, we see scientists claiming “all the evidence” suggests a natural origin in mass media outlets. Indeed, all the evidence can say anything you want it to once you omit all the evidence suggesting otherwise. I worry these conflicts of interest, biased representations of evidence, and gross imbalances of media power can corrupt the social process of science.

We are living through an unprecedented crisis. Throughout history, science has battled over paradigms and slowly the long arc of science has bent towards Truth, but none of those paradigm shifts pertained to science itself, least of all to the possibility that preeminent scientists with unprecedented mass-media reach played a role in an unprecedented atrocity. Compared to what science is capable of, SARS-CoV-2 was a petite Pandora’s jewelry box in an Amazon warehouse of larger possibilities, and some scientists are abusing their authority and expert status to obstruct investigations that could inspire policies that stop scientists from opening other, bigger boxes in the Pandora’s Warehouse of modern biotechnology.

Please, do not “trust” science and do not blindly trust scientists, least of all those who exhibit a pattern of misrepresenting the entire facts of the matter on SARS-CoV-2 origins (the truth, the *whole* truth). Love science and scientists, even those with whom we disagree in glorious epistemological combat, but do not trust us.

Keep an open mind that even scientists like me can and will make mistakes. As someone members of the public view as “a scientist” I pledge to listen for good ideas no matter where they come from and do my best to update my thinking in light of new evidence. I will correct my mistakes and acknowledge whoever helped me see the light. Engage, question, discuss, and test science. Please, don’t stop there. For the love of future generations, please manage science, because we have failed to manage our own. Only by democratizing the skeptical essence of science and welcoming everyone to this epistemological battlefield with ground rules can we learn the mistakes of COVID-19 and collectively bend the long arc of science towards Truth.

Please, let’s improve the interface between science and society for the benefit of both.

A Day In The Life.

Up at 8:30a on Friday, I went thru my finger stick to check my BSL (Blood Sugar Level) and recorded it on my Diabetes 2 chart, made coffee and breakfast, took a Tylenol Extra Strength for various pains, had a couple smokes in the semi-cool garage and checked the leftover errands list. It was already 45°, overcast and forecast to hit 51°.

I checked my day's to-do list, and tuned into the "Chris Plante Show", from 9-12. I had a banking errand, and got that done, right after lunch. I scanned the news and weather; the DJIA was down well over 400pts, already. FJB.

Which was the greatest miracle? That St Patty drove all the snakes out of Ireland? Or that they all wound-up in America, as lawyers?

Hey, Happy St Patty's Day! No, I don't drink "green beer", or eat "green eggs", but I'll eat some lettuce in a sandwich, or have some green beans, for dinner.

St Pat's Day Friday

The rain started around 1p, so I decided to get the 2 loads of laundry done, folded and put away. At least it wasn't snow, while at 59°, and no snow in the forecast. It's been a very, very mild Winter so far, but I'm not doing anything Spring-like, just yet. After lunch and lauundry, I grabbed a couple hours sleep on the LR couch. Temps started droppiong around 6:30p, so I garaged the Jeep, turned-on the oscillating ceramic heater, and started drinking 3 of the Budweiser Light Platinum 6% beers I had bought to repay a neighbor, from last weekend. I'd bought 2 cases (12 per), so I only drank part of one case.

I called Sherry to get next week's schedule set-up, had a few more Platinums, watched some TV, and called it quits at 11p.

"Mother Nature's In Charge; We're Just Along For The Ride". -- John Shelley, 1996.

I slept-in until 10a, on Saturday, a sunny, nippy 38°, forecast to hit 50°. I felt like crap from the 4-5 beers, and de3cided to stay-in this morning. I scanned the weather and news' headlines on Fox.com, and many were disturbing. Trump's being arrested on bullshit charges, our New England fishing fleets are being decimated by our own government, local county bopards are selling IS faremland to CCP-China companies. police still being defunded and cutting daytime shifts, massive LA School District about to shut down. And many more. Very, very disturbing.

I felt sick all day, and just spent much of the day sleeping on the LR couch. After some food, I began to feel better around 6p, caught the evening news on Fox, watched the IMSA 12 Hours of Sebring (FL) Race, and called it an early evening, around 10:30p.

I slept-in until 9a on Sunday, after having been awake part of the night with left hip & leg pain, to a bitter cold 23°, but sunny, morning. I was awake at 1:35a, 5:28a and 7:05a with leg pain, but managed to get back to sleep, without taking any 50mg Tramadol, and I hurt. As soon as I got downstairs, started the Kona Coffewe, did the finger stick for the BSL number, I took 3 50mg Tramadol to assuage the pain. I scanned the news and weather on my office-sunroom desktop. Timew for a shave and shower, and to get ready for the day.

The Saudi Arabia F1 Grand Prix is on at 1300hrs -- 1:00p -- and I'll be watching. Good race, and I got 2 loads of laundry done during the 75 laps, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. I had Breaded & Almond-Crusted Flounder Filets w/ Butter Sauce for lunch at 3p, and watched a TRASHCAR Cup Series Race, from Atlanta where it was only 44°, while doing some computer and paperwork. The Nation's in a "coldspell". BFD, tomorrow's the First Day of Spring. Things will get better.

To me, it's a badge of honor, if EVERYTHING I DO, SAY AND HAVE, is racist and sexist. F•ck all you "wokester" scumbags to death. Heh.

Equity Investment Executive Ed Dowd was on the War Room on Lindell TV where he discussed the consequences of Biden’s actions on the economy. It does not look good. Watch his video. Am4erica's imploding upon itself, as a Depression comes very soon. I've been saying this on FR and in the "Journal". I'm pulling lots of cash out of WF, and storing it in my massive Cannon T65 Gunsafe.

I had a couple of nearby errands to run, got the garbage and recycle bins out to the curb for morning pick-up, pulled my Cardiology file and updated my meds' list for the Dr's mtg, closed-up and temps dropped, and just relaxed thru the evening, watching old 2011-2012 episodes I'd missed. Lights out at 10p, since I'm getting up at 0600 hours tomorrow.

The alarm went off at ZERO-DARK-THIRTY -- 6a on Monday -- on the 1st Day of Spring, at a cold 22° outside, just as the garbage truck was coming thru the complex. I fired-up the furnace to 74°, made coffee, did the finger stick, and scanned the weather ande news in my office-sunroom. After a couple Marlboros in the slowly-warming garage, I tuned into the Chris Stigall Show 6-9a, already had breakfast-prep laid out, but took a 50mg Tramadol, and would wait an hour until the med fully-worked.

It was light around 6:35a, and the forecast was for 53° and sunny. We sure had a mild Winter, with about 2¾" of snow, in total, during that period, in small increments. It was also a dry Winter, with a few hard rains, but nothing to write home about, in both cases. Personally, I'm excited about Spring. The Okame Cherries are alrady open, with so many of plants' buds swelling and ready-to-bloom, after temps hit and stay in the upper-60s/ lower-70s. I'll be liking that.

After breakfast, I tuned into the Chris Plante Show, 6-9s, at 9 and left for the Apple Hill Medical Center's new Vascular & Cardiology Dept Complex, at 9:25, and met my new Vascular Surgeon. More scheduled tests coming on my carotid arteries (neck) and legs, next month; the Dr was a real nice guy. After two errand stops, I was back home by 12noon. I l;istened to Bonehead Bopngino for 45-50mins, before I left for my Sis' place, to drop-off some stuff.

Fat slob, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, a lowlife dirtbag sambo, who's vowed to arrest Trump in handcuffs and legirons, and who's bragged about eating cases of Yodles each week, is getting some "karma". The House Judiciary Committee is demanding that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg testify before Congress in the wake of his "unprecedented abuse of prosecutorial authority," as he reportedly considers indicting former President Trump in charges related to alleged hush money payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels in 2016. Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, sent a letter, exclusively obtained by Fox News Digital, to Bragg Monday morning demanding his testimony. The letter was also signed by House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., and House Committee on Administration Chairman Brian Steil, R-Wis. The fat nigga slob's hanging his own ass.

I ran another errand to North York, came back to my LR couch and tried 3x to sleep, but only spent an hour on it. After dinner, I did computer work, scanned the news and weather, watched a few old episodes of "Gold Rush", and prepared to get up again at 6a, since my cleaning lady would be in at 8:30a. I unplugged at 10p.

Up again at 6a on Tuesday, at Zero-Dark Thirty, to the alarm, and to a cold 28°, I upped the heat, made "racist coffee", did the other usual routines, checked tgghe news and weather, and had Kona Coffee with a couple Marlboros, in the garage. Same ol', same ol' news. Except for the bullshit, pending "Trump Arrest". Personally, I don't think it'll even happen. Just good headlines; and perverted demonkkkRAT masturbation fantasies.

There's no "catching-up on sleep", either. Sleep is like time: once you've lost it, you can never get it back.

JoAnne arrived at 8:30a and got to work; I stayed out of her way, listened to the "CS Show" 6-9, and the "CP Show" from 9-12. I'm not meeting Sherry at the super-über spacious York Galleria Mall, at 1p, to get some walking exercise in, since her son's dog is sick and she has to "babysit" him for the day. Maybe tomorrow. After JoAnne left, I had a light lunch and took a Flexoril® and a half os a 10mg Valium®, and laid down on the LR couch, for the afternoon. I needed some sleep.

I got three, felt better and had a Fried Egg Sandwich, for a late 4p lunch. I scanned the news and weather, and checked my to-do/ food shopping list for tomorrow. Sherry and I rescheduled our walk for Wednesday. I laid dowen for another 2hrs, had dinner and watched "The Curse of Oak Island", a serioes on History I'd watched 4-5yrs ago, but stopped due to no progress in the show. I went back to some old seasons' episodes of "Gold Rush" until 11p, and quit for the night.

Up at 8:15a on Wednesday, it was a cloudy, mild 46° outside, with rain showers forecast for later tonite. After warming-up the condo and garage, I had coffee and a couple smokes, checked my food shopping list, breakfast and got ready for the day. I left for Weis Market at 10:15, got thru the shopping list, and was home by 11:15. Virtually no trqaffic and an uncrowded store. I continued listening to the "CP Show", until 12noon, and "Bonehead Bongino" came on until 1:25p, until I leave to meet-up with Sherry at the local 52ac park.

Uh-oh, the doomsday emo-dolts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) hit the pause button on their Joy Division cassette tape long enough to warn us of a "mysterious new fungus" that can be deadly to people who contract it. It’s called Candida auris, aka C. auris. MATH-O-RAMA: If the funky fungus killed 60% of 4,041 people, that means 2,424.6 Americans died of it in 2021. That’s roughly the same number of people who die every year from constipation. I’d much rather succumb to the death fungus than constipation. No worries.

Sherry and I met at the nearby Springettsbury Twp Park at 1:30p, rather than the Galleria. It was partly sunny and 61°+, and just perfect to be outside. We had a great time as usual, and she left around 4:30 to get some errands done on her way home. I had dinner, watched Fox News, Watter, Carlson, andf some more episodes of season 8 of "Gold Rush". Lights out at 11p.

Holy shit! Philadelphia will pay $9.25M to protesters over police use of tear gas and rubber bullets during 2020 unrest. The city also agreed to contribute $500,000 to a fund that will provide counseling to victims of police violence and offer community-led programming. The city has agreed to pay a combined $9.25 million to hundreds of people teargassed, struck with rubber bullets, and detained by police during the 2020 racial justice protests after the police murder of George Floyd. NYC's doing the same thing to the riotous bastards!. I agree, that it was wrong to tear gas a fire rubber bullets. THEY SHOULD HAVE SHOT ALL OF THE DEAD, ON THE SPOT, ESPECIALLY ARSONISTS, LOOTERS AND RIOTERS!

Still think EVs are a good buy, or are "the future"? NEWS: "A growing number of electric vehicles are reportedly being written off when even the slightest damage is done to their batteries - driving up owner costs and negating any environmental benefit of going “green.” As Reuters reports, insurance companies are writing off more and more low-mileage electric vehicles that have only minor damage, because any harm to the battery packs can’t be accessed or repaired. With some Tesla models, for example, the battery packs are actually glued into the car’s structure, making them difficult to remove, replace or repair".

Good news. The fat sambo slob Manhattan DA, Alvie Bragg, decided not to press the Impaneled Manhattan Grand Jury to indict Trump, but the turd-findling demoKKKrat lowlife rather would rather eat a case of Yodles.

I slept-in until almost 9a on Thursday, a cloudy, rainy, almost "balmy" 49° morning. I went thru the usual routines, tuned into the "CP Show", and with 2 loads of laundry to do -- I did one -- and nowhere in particular that I needed to go, decided to stay home and get the laundry and some condo chores done. I scanned the weather and news, awaiting a large and heavy Amazon delivery. I opened the garage to air it out, from all the smoke.

Nowhere to go, nothing to do, and no one to do it with.

So, Trump's indictment and arrest is off-the-table for this week. It's all about getting him out of the 2024 race. We are down to the desperate measures here. What worries me more is, that if he gets off on the phoney baloney stripper payment BS charge, that he'll be assassinated. The vicious, terroristic left want Trump in confinement just long enough for him to “commit suicide”. Just like "Jeffrey Epstein did". The Deep State will stop at nothing to keep his from becoming the 47th POTUS. Believe me; it'll happen.

The 2 case delivery of Bai Socorro Sweet SuperTea, arrived at 1:30p, and I got that squared away; laundry also done. "Bonehead Bongino" was up next on WMAL-DC after the "CP Show", so I had a Ham Salad Sandwich and banana for lunch, and grabbed a 3hr snooze on the LR couch. I did some condo chores until 6p, had dinner, watched news, the 2 Fopx Guys nd more old episodes of "Gold Rush". The torrential rain hit around 8:45, and continued on-and-off during the evening and night. Lights out at 11p.

Tomorrow starts a new week here in the "Journal", and it's clear for me, so far. Sherry and I have a day together, and that along will make my week.

Student Loan Forgiveness And Big Bank Bailouts Won’t Help When The National Debt Crisis Comes.

As Congress considers raising the debt ceiling again, the nation must realize that, unlike the Biden administration’s swift response to the student debt crisis and Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) failure, American taxpayers will not receive a bailout from a national debt disaster. The losses will pile up, and American taxpayers will foot the bill until they no longer can.

Government employees, media pundits, and politicians often note the hardships people will suffer if the federal government does not make taxpayers pay off their student loan debts or cover their financial losses due to a bank failure, but they rarely mention the burden the growing national debt puts on Americans.

Last week, depositors rushed to withdraw their funds from SVB as it swiftly and spectacularly crashed into insolvency. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation now controls the bank. SVB fell largely because it sold the low-interest government securities it had held in reserve at a staggering loss. SVB’s collapse is the largest bank failure since 2007.

Now, at the same time SVB has come under FDIC control, the debate about whether Congress should raise the debt ceiling roils in Washington, DC.

Truth be told, the roiling is mild. There is a consensus among most members of Congress, the Biden administration, and the punditocracy that the debt ceiling should and will be raised. The modest debate primarily concerns how much to raise the ceiling and where to cut the budget to appease the deficit hawks. Very few officials, representatives, or talking heads question whether the ceiling should be raised at all.

Budgetary experts in our nation’s capital claim it would be catastrophic if the treasury cannot continue to borrow money to cover budgetary shortfalls. They predict global financial meltdown, the collapse of entitlement programs, and the replacement of the Petro-dollar with the “Petro-Yuan,” which seems to be happening anyway.

Some so-called experts even insist that, to stop the recurrent panics that flare up whenever Congress approaches its borrowing limit, the debt ceiling must be removed altogether. They claim the nation can maintain budgetary and financial stability only if Congress can assume debt without constraint.

As the debt ceiling debate proceeds and SVB sits on the auction block, the Supreme Court considers the legality of Biden’s student loan bailout. That case depends upon whether a president can unilaterally wipe away government-guaranteed student loans (or a portion of them) without the consent of Congress. The impetus of the loan bailout is, ostensibly, that too many student debtors feel unduly burdened and cannot service the debt they have incurred.

The administration presents the program as “…a three part plan to help working and middle-class federal student loan borrowers transition back to regular payment as pandemic-related support expires.”

In the program’s announcement, the Biden administration dubiously boasts: “Due to the economic challenges created by the pandemic, the Biden-Harris Administration has extended the student loan repayment pause a number of times. Because of this, no one with a federally held loan has had to pay a single dollar in loan payments since President Biden took office.”

The administration presents the fact that “no one with a federally held loan has had to pay a single dollar in payments” as an accomplishment. But when the nation’s college graduates cannot pay back their loans, guaranteed by American taxpayers, the administration has nothing to celebrate. After all, educations financed by student loans should have prepared student borrowers for jobs that pay well enough to service their educational debts.

A trope attributed to J. Paul Getty applies here: “If you owe the bank $100, that’s your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that’s the bank’s problem.” Although Getty’s $100 million is penny ante compared to the $30 trillion or so of debt on the nation’s books today. And the bank whose problem the bad loans have become is the United States Treasury.

The U.S. Treasury’s student loan debt brings us back to the Silicon Valley Bank failure. Savvy depositors at SVB began yanking their money —- large amounts of money —- from the bank a few weeks ago. These withdrawals cascaded into a run on the bank.

SVB had insufficient funds to cover its depositors’ demands. To make matters worse, Jerome Powell and the Federal Reserve have been raising interest rates, causing the government-guaranteed mortgages SVB had held in reserve to fall in value. These older securities have lost significant value because newer bonds have three times the return.

In 2007, bundled government-guaranteed mortgages failed spectacularly and spawned the biggest market crash since 1929. Like last Friday, the federal government stepped in and bailed out the failed financial institutions. The cost of the bailouts in 2008 was, according to a Massachusetts Institute of Technology study, close to $500 billion.

The federal government proposes to forgive about $400 billion in student loans. SVB’s losses, and the losses of its depositors, will cost billions.

All of these bailouts have one thing in common: American taxpayers guarantee them. Taxpayers pay interest on the debt and, when the financial instruments fail, have to cover the disaster clean-up, too. Also, since the federal budget runs a deficit, the federal government covers the failed loans with borrowed money.

It’s a circle game, and not a very fun game at that. And there is no end in sight.

The national debt is more than $30 trillion. The Treasury paid approximately $475 billion in interest on the national debt in 2022. This figure will increase as the debt grows, interest rates rise, and the federal budget balloons. Older debt, now commodified and used as cash reserves, will only lose value as rates continue to rise. The losses will pile up, and American taxpayers will foot the bill until they no longer can.

The largest lenders to the U.S. Treasury are intergovernmental agencies: the Federal Reserve, the Social Security Trust Fund, and the Federal Disability Trust funds. Together they hold almost $7 trillion dollars of the national debt. The other $25 trillion is held by China, Japan, the U.K., other nations, privately held insurance companies, pension funds, and state and municipal treasuries.

If these securities fail, the fallout will be enormous. And the fallout will land squarely on the shoulders of American taxpayers.

Unlike the administration’s concern for student loan borrowers, the idea that the national debt might be too great a burden for the American taxpayer rarely enters into the conversation. After all, Congress’ attitude seems to be that taxpayers exist to pay taxes and support whatever they deem necessary, no matter how ill-considered, redundant, or wasteful it may be. The administration’s plan to hire 85,000 new IRS agents shows how determined they are to collect their due.

The White House wants to suspend student loan payments and cover SVB’s losses while borrowing trillions to cover budget shortfalls. Having gone through a similar scenario in 2008, it is clear that all government debt has one thing in common: American taxpayers must pay the bill when financial instruments fail.

And fail they do. Spectacularly. And far more often than they are supposed to.

Who knows what the real cost is or will eventually be.

EV owners are increasingly frustrated with home charging, and it should worry every electric car maker.

Expensive electricity rates are making home charging a headache. Home charging has long been thought of as a solution to range anxiety. EV owners need to learn more about cost-saving options for home charging.

Eggs, gas, and now electric vehicles. Inflation is hitting electricity rates, making EV home charging a more miserable experience for some drivers at the absolute worst time.

A new J.D. Power study of EV owners who use Level 2 home-charging stations found that overall satisfaction in the home charging experiences has declined 12 points since last year. (More on EV charger types here). A major factor in this decline in satisfaction was the inflationary rise in electricity prices, the study found.

This could pose a real problem for the EV market, as home charging has often been held up as a solution to daily range-anxiety issues. Without a robust public charging infrastructure, daily home charging is currently key to effective EV ownership, according to automotive executives, dealers, and analysts.

"Whether you're an automaker, dealer or utility company participating in the EV ecosystem, improving the EV owner experience with respect to home charging should be a common goal shared by all," Brent Gruber, executive director of the EV practice at J.D. Power, said in the study.

Gruber pointed to several programs designed to ease the cost of EV home charging, including options to schedule charging at the most affordable times of day. But the J.D. Power study found that this is little awareness for these money-saving tricks, which brings down the overall experience.

"As the EV marketplace continues to grow, brands that help owners take advantage of these offerings will be in a much better position down the road," Gruber said.

Where you are and what you drive matters Geography played a role in overall satisfaction levels with home charging, J.D. Power found. In New England, where electricity prices surge at peak hours, home charging satisfaction saw the largest year-over-year decline.

Only about half of EV owners in the study said they had an understanding of their local utility company programs for home charging. Increasing this awareness is key to improving the EV home charging experience, said Adrian Chung, J.D. Power's director of utilities intelligence.

"This can snowball into helping potential EV owners make a more informed purchase decision, as well as minimizing home charging concerns and supporting greater EV adoption," Chung said.

Different brands also had different levels of satisfaction, with Tesla home charging stations topping the list.

The End of Money…and Freedom.

A new bill moving quickly through the Missouri House is all too familiar to red states that have been blindsided by this Trojan Horse legislation.

HB 1165, sponsored by Justin Hicks (R) creates a new Article 12 in Missouri’s legal code for the Uniform Commercial Code. This lays the groundwork for a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDCs) that would be the ONLY currency authorized by the federal government.

HB 1165 would amend the UCC to perfect possession of Controllable Electronic Records and adds new sections to article 9 that redefine “Money,” and what we currently understand to mean “Electronic,” in a manner that creates regulatory gaps and consumer confusion as opposed to the straightforward language of the 1998 UCC definitions.

HB 1165 Would Change Everything We Know About Money, Privacy, and Health Freedom.

In his most recent Substack article, attorney Tom Renz explains, “Along with the effort to collapse the dollar and our banking system, the tyrants are also pushing legislation that can allow CBDCs to exist legally and without competition. This is being done in a VERY sneaky way because of the massive political opposition to anything CBDC-related. At this point, the major focus is on passing state-level legislation – particularly in a number of key RED states. Bills are being pushed that appear innocuous but are written to create a check-mate situation when CBDCs come into play. That way these red states won’t be able to oppose it.”

What does HB 1165 do?

1) Redefines “Electronic” in the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) in a broad interpretation to encompass digital, optical, magnetic, electromagnetic, or similar capabilities.

On page 4, lines 66-67: “Electronic” is defined as “relating to technology having electrical, digital, magnetic, wireless, optical, electromagnetic, or similar capabilities.” §400.1-201(b)(16.A)

The Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) is a set of standards that facilitates and clarifies the definitions used in interstate sales and commercial transactions. UCC has been adopted into every state’s legal code. These standards are amended from time to time, but the changes this year are dramatic in that they were specifically designed to facilitate Central Bank Digital Currencies.

Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) are electronic currencies that are run by central banking systems. Once implemented, the government could use CBDCs to remove Missourians’ authority to transact without implicit approval from the government, as we do now with cash. CBDCs could not only lead to central banks having a record of every transaction, but their ability to stop them.

This new definition in the UCC would streamline the process of the adoption of CBDCs in all states.

2) Redefines “Money” in the UCC to exclude any medium of exchange that was not previously authorized or adopted by the government excluding cryptocurrency, but including Central Bank Digital Currency as a recognized medium of exchange.

Pg. 5, lines 93-95: “The term [money] does not include an electronic record that is a medium of exchange recorded and transferable in a system that existed and operated for the medium of exchange before the medium of exchange was authorized or adopted by the government”. §400.1-201(b)(24)

As Daniel Horowitz explains in his recent article at The Blaze, “Now, it is true that under existing UCC rules, there is nothing precluding a CBDC…[but] this amendment implicitly anticipates joining a CBDC, while strategically and explicitly banning decentralized cryptocurrencies —- that can’t be used to control a population —- as an escape hatch for those of us who don’t want government tracking and controlling every aspect of our lives.”

HB 1165 will also…

• Create status, standing and jurisdiction for “choice of law,” in the District of Columbia.

• Create new language that will require comprehensive knowledge of coding, law, and international contract law that is neither plain, nor equal among the laymen

• Create significant gaps in the current understanding of tangible collateral currently held by debtors

• Create an infrastructure for Central Bank Digital Currency without regulatory framework in plac

Where Did These UCC Changes Come From?

The Uniform Law Commission, a Chicago-based non-profit, is responsible for writing and updating the UCC code. The new amendments were written the summer of 2022 and rolled out to all states over the months that followed. Legislators were even told to “not read the bills”, that it was just a routine update.

However, the update was far from routine and it was written for a specific purpose. In a video PowerPoint presentation on the amendments to the UCC, Steven Weise, of the Uniform Law Commission and one of the drafters of the UCC amendments, asserted that under the new definition,

“[Bitcoin] will never be money for UCC purposes; same for other kinds of cryptocurrencies…but Central Bank Digital Currency, CBDC…could be money.” -— Steven Weise, Uniform Law Commission, Aug, 2022

Mr. Weise states, “The revisions to Article I are very clear now that Bitcoin will not be money, because even though the definition provides for electronic money -- it says that an asset that is adopted by a government as its medium of exchange will not qualify as money… if the electronic asset, such as Bitcoin, existed before it was adopted by the government. So Bitcoin, of course, exists today; it existed before El Salvador adopted it as its currency…so it will never be money for UCC purposes. The same for other kinds of crypto currencies.”

Never Let a Crisis Go to Waste

With the recent bank failures, it seems that the U.S. Treasury is betting that the unstable nature of alternative currencies like Bitcoin will convince Americans of the need for regulation. Nellie Liang, the U. S. Dept. of the Treasury’s Under Secretary for Domestic Finance said in a recent workshop, “Failures of large crypto firms, runs on stablecoins, and substantial investor losses in the past year confirmed many of the concerns raised in the reports…These developments reinforce the recommendations that were made for regulators to vigorously enforce existing laws to protect consumers and prevent use of crypto assets for illicit finance, as well as to continuously monitor whether emerging products or services require new regulations. In addition, the reports recommended for Congress to expand regulators’ authorities where gaps have been identified, including with respect to regulation of stablecoins.”

Bills amending the UCC code have been filed in over 20 states. Upon adoption and inclusion by all 50 states, new amendments would take staggered effect between July 1, 2025 and beyond. Missouri’s HB 1165, which is being fast-tracked through the House, is essentially the “authorizing language,” on the integration of Central Bank Digital Currency.

What is the Worst Thing That Could Happen if HB 1165 Passes?

HB 1165 was specifically designed to facilitate not all digital currency, but to authorize just one —- Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDCs) — without anyone knowing. This bill is a hidden agenda to end cryptocurrency as a form of authorized money and to roll out a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) through a backdoor in the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) legislation.

As South Dakota’s Governor Kristi Noem said in a recent interview,

“It is being sold as a UCC guidelines update, but it essentially says that the only authorized digital currency would be the federal government’s.” —- South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, March 9, 2023

This legislation would not only render all other cryptocurrency unauthorized/unacceptable but also make Americans that much more at the mercy of the federal government. Though cryptocurrency is inherently risky, even more ominous would be a single, federally controlled digital currency that the government could monitor, suspend, or confiscate on a whim.

The Future of Instant Payments…and Privacy

Additionally, huge concerns exist for the privately owned Federal Reserve, which is not a federal agency, having direct retail CBDCs and transactional data like they’re discussing with FedNow, a pilot program excepted by next spring. On March 1st of this year, the U.S. Department of the Treasury issued a press release stating, “The Federal Reserve has indicated that it expects to launch the FedNow Service this year, which will be designed to allow for near-instantaneous retail payments on a 24x7x365 basis, using an existing form of central bank money (i.e., central bank reserves) as an interbank settlement asset.” (Liang, 2023) They describe FedNow as “beneficial”.

The Federal Reserve’s FAQ on FedNow is showing it is a mostly retail-focused, Real-time Gross Settlement Fund held as a liability of the Fed itself. Judging from the initial transaction limit of $25,000, FedNow is more applicable to small business and retail payment needs, but expansion of the Fedwire operating window may enable payment innovation for high-value corporate payments. Behind these changes lies an evolving liquidity environment. Excess reserve balances have been steadily declining, and banks have communicated a desire to decrease balances even further.

The biggest concern for Americans is that FedNow will enable the government to access the transaction history and data of retail account users in the U.S, similar to how Visa and MasterCard have stated they will be reviewing gun purchases. They could easily track vaccine status and sensitive health information, data that is already shared nationally and globally, thanks to PDMP and the trend toward the centralization of data.

What Can Legislators Do?

Though the adoption of this FedNow technology is still some time away, we need our legislators to act now to protect the public.

Instead of passing bills like HB 1165, Missouri legislators should pre-emptively block them as well as the authorization language needed to implement these centralized systems.

Members of Congress are currently attempting to address CBDCs with a bill that would prevent the Federal Reserve from issuing a digital currency. H.R. 1122, titled the “CBDC Anti-Surveillance State Act,” is sponsored by Representative Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) and cosponsored by fourteen other representatives. If enacted, this bill would ban the creation of a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).

We currently have no idea which type of CBDC the Fed intends to release AND we currently have no regulatory framework around transactional data, retail CBDC or anything preventing programmable dollars or smart contracts.

We should not create a path forward on digital currency until we have:

Regulatory framework in place, and a clear idea of what type of CBDC we’re looking to adopt as a country. Louisiana has still never adopted Article 2 of the UCC. Governor Kristi Noem vetoed South Dakota’s UCC bill, HB 1193, on March 9th noting in her veto letter, “the UCC’s first iteration took twenty years to be adopted by each state. There is no reason South Dakota must adopt the changes made by HB 1193 under this purported deadline”.

Legislators in Missouri should also take their time. There is no reason to rush into this. We should put the brakes on this legislation and, instead, ask questions.