John Klar: Senator uses nonsense and lies to undermine Vermonters’ liberties

When science is fabricated to advance a bizarre dogma to intimidate others by violating clearly-established constitutional liberties, Vermonters should be troubled. When this is done by an elected official with a law degree, Vermonters should be livid.

John Klar

Sen. Dick McCormack, D-Windsor, has displayed the toxicity and fear-mongering that has infested Vermont under the pretense of COVID. First it was “flatten the curve,” then it was “wear a mask unless you have a reason not to, which you shall decide.”

McCormack now calls for anyone who does not get injected with a vaccine to be barred from schools, medical care, or the ability to purchase food or clothing. In making this call, he denigrates anyone insisting on liberties as “stupid” while declaring himself a responsible, patriotic adult.

In a letter titled “Legislative Report: Science, Liberty and Nonsense,” McCormack presents the issue of COVID vaccinations as solely a “scientific discussion.” This is the first manipulation — discarding constitutional issues in favor of “health professionals.” The senator openly boasts that he has abdicated any concern for liberty or constitutionality, yielding all to “science.”

Implying those who question the government on constitutionality challenge science (referencing climate change and evolution), Dick ironically preaches that:

Stubborn loyalty to any accepted theory perverts that theory into dogma, and that is profoundly unscientific. Equating untested hypotheses with scientifically proven theory is pseudo-science. The most immediate problem with pseudo-science is the confusion about Covid vaccination.

McCormack then asserts as facts his profoundly unscientific pseudo-science:

To the extent that we can know anything scientifically, we know that the Covid vaccines are reasonably safe and safer than Covid. We know they greatly lessen the odds of contracting Covid and/or spreading it to others. We know that vaccination not only protects each individual patient, but lessens the spread of Covid among the population.

Where did the good senator garner his assertion that we “know” vaccinations “greatly lessen the odds of contracting or spreading COVID”? We certainly do not know any such thing. According to the CDC, “although COVID-19 vaccines are effective at keeping you from getting sick, scientists are still learning how well vaccines prevent you from spreading the virus that causes COVID-19 to others, even if you do not have symptoms.”

McCormack has far exceeded his expertise. And even if the vaccination did reduce spread, is it by 10 percent, or perhaps 40 percent? Constitutional law requires that in order to discriminate against citizens the way he demands, he and the government must scientifically prove that the disease rises to the “compelling state interest” level, that the vaccine prevents transmission, and if so, how much — 10 percent wouldn’t cut it. McCormack lacks the omniscience he feigns — we will never know these things, scientifically. What we do know is what the Constitution says, and what our legal protections are. And for that, McCormack maligns us as stupid.

The senator’s proselytizing continues:

Not being vaccinated risks prolonging the pandemic, not only for the unvaccinated but for everyone, prolonging it long enough for the virus to evolve resistant variants.

Generally, the science of microbiology holds that the tendency of viruses is to mutate over time into more benign variants in the unvaccinated. “Doctor McCormack” has reversed science and held up his personal hypothesis as factually true in lieu of the experts. (Indeed, some scientists have warned that administering vaccinations during an active pandemic risks creating vaccine-resistant variants in the vaccinated, so McCormack would then be the breeding ground.)

Instead of Dr. McCormack the mad scientist, let us weigh what reliable experts say about variants:

Mutation. The word naturally conjures fears of unexpected and freakish changes. Ill-informed discussions of mutations thrive during virus outbreaks, including the ongoing spread of SARS-CoV-2. In reality, mutations are a natural part of the virus life cycle and rarely impact outbreaks dramatically.

Translation? McCormack has his science reversed and is “conjuring fears” in order to discriminate against others. How will variants develop “resistance to the vaccine” in people who have not been vaccinated?

McCormack is scaring Vermonters with false science to inhibit their liberties. He says:

We must not agree to the pseudo-libertarian argument that vaccination should not be a requirement for entering indoor public spaces, using mass transit, school, camp, work places, etc. The right to not be vaccinated does not translate to a right to infect others or to prolong a pandemic.

This is lies and manipulation — there is no evidence that vaccination prevents transmission, let alone that the unvaccinated will prolong the pandemic. Dick is contentedly vaccinated, and the “science” says he can still transmit the disease, prolonging the pandemic.

The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution states “no State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Government is prohibited from infringing upon any fundamental rights unless it demonstrates that it employs the least restrictive means to accomplish a compelling state interest. McCormick (and Gov. Phil Scott) lack anywhere near the evidentiary foundation to constitutionally restrict travel, assembly, or access to food; coerce people to take an experimental drug, or discriminate against those who “don’t comply.” Due process considerations for those who wish to object are also dismissed: what of those with underlying health issues or previous adverse reactions to vaccines?

Sen. McCormack makes this provocative declaration to Vermonters: “My freedom ends where it interferes with your freedom, and yours ends where it interferes with mine.” Very well said, Senator. Indeed, you are not “free” to abuse your platform as a representative to fabricate science and pervert the law in order to seize hard-won liberties, in flagrant violation of your oath to the constitutions.

John Klar is an attorney and farmer residing in Brookfield, and the former pastor of the First Congregational Church of Westfield. © Copyright True North Reports 2021. All rights reserved.

Image courtesy of state of Vermont

31 thoughts on “John Klar: Senator uses nonsense and lies to undermine Vermonters’ liberties

  1. Newest mangled missive from science-denier Dick Mccormack starts off with the Dem obligatory lie – injects self routinely as do colleagues – whenever they feel like it – however not necessary as Chancellor Scott is on same page as VT Democrat Party. Looks like he doesn’t get that bc of internet local papers are online lol

    Health and safety mandate, an open letter to Secretary French

    August 1, 2021

    Dear Editor,

    “Hello, Secretary French. First, thank you for your good work on an important job under difficult circumstances. Like my legislative colleagues, I’ve generally refrained from injecting myself into the details of managing a public emergency. But, as we approach the mid point of summer, I’m compelled to urge you to limit entry to Vermont schools to people fully vaccinated against Covid-19.

    Or, if we must allow viral vectors into our children’s schools, let us at the very least require masks, hand sanitizing, social distancing, and a negative Covid test.”
    https://vermontjournal.com/editorial/letters-to-the-editor/health-and-safety-mandate-an-open-letter-to-secretary-french/

    The “science” tells us that Depopulation ‘Vax’ doesn’t protect against Covid or stop transmission thereof, but claims to help stop deaths and make symptoms less severe which were already less severe, nor do we know who amongst our legislators, VT State Employees, medical community and fams have received it lol.

    If numbers of Americans and following agencies in approx 50 percentile and Military, Airline, CDC, NIH, FDA are refusing to be ‘vaxxed’ – what does this tell us.

    World elites including Bill Gates do not vaccinate kids – so why would same or wanna-be elites take the ‘vax’. If it’s being foisted upon the unwashed pretty sure we have our answer.

  2. How did we get here from “Flatting the curve” ?

    Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down
    Letting the days go by, water flowing underground
    Into the blue again, after the money’s gone
    Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground

    Time isn’t holding up, time isn’t after us
    Same as it ever was, same as it ever was
    Same as it ever was, same as it ever was
    Same as it ever was, same as it ever was

    Big Ups to the Talking Heads

  3. Nothing more need be said:

    “The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution states “no State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

    I wonder how much McCormack is making each time he writes one of those letters from the medical mafia running Vermont now.

    • Duh ? The Constitution ? What’s that ?

      THE ONLY RIGHTS WE WILL LOSE ARE THE ONES WE GIVE UP.

  4. I sent Mr. McCormack a request to sign a vow to never use air travel for the rest of his life. If he believed his pseudo climate change science, he would have signed the vow. He did not sign. He is nothing more than a hypocrite as are his dem/prog colleagues.

    • From above link 3:31: Conflates refusal to reject depopulation shot with a host of illegal activities: “…But it [Scott’s refusal to mandate] has had the unintended effect of lending credence to anti-vaccine nonsense, as though this public health imperative is a mere matter of differing opinions, and not a question of life and death, as though factual claims derived scientifically and factual claims derived from the slums of cyberspace are of equal value. We have many mandates and prohibitions. We ban drunk driving. People go to jail for committing physical assault. We don’t treat these as matters of personal choice in which we try to persuade people to choose to behave well. Rather, we recognize certain behaviors as invasive, assaultive, dangerous, and we prohibit them…”

      The senator’s logic presents as compete jackass imho

  5. The use of the word science has been so abused over the past few months that no one
    knows what it means any longer and for anyone to bully, coerce, embarrass, threaten, and
    treat others who have not taken the “shot” as marked people is despicable. If you want the “shot” get it and leave others to make their decisions. There are arguments for and against this “shot”… make your own choices and leave others alone.

    • Sadly so true, our educational system is so faulty our citizens do not understand what science truly is. Nor do they understand the civics and history or our state and nation, to say this is problematic is a serious understatement. It is purposely planned and being used against us for less than desirable outcomes.

  6. The reason we are now seeing success in slowing the spread of the pandemic is due in large part to the Trump administration’s Operation Wrap Speed which gave the resources and cut through the red tape and helped provide multiple effective vaccines in record time.

    Perhaps instead of simply focusing on the negative, we should also be celebrating positive actions taken by the Trump administration which have helped made the difference in this crisis between us and what is now happening in India , Brazil, and other countries.

    • I suspect that Trump will wish that he never laid any claim to the “success” of this injection.

      • Hi Mr. Nelson,
        Just wondering why you say that Trump should not take some deserved praise for Operation Warp Speed which brought these incredibly effective vaccines in record time. Vaccines that by all evidence to date with over hundreds of millions of doses given have been shown to be save and are in the process of ending the pandemic. It would seem important to give credit where credit is due.

        My understanding is that Trump himself, even though or maybe because, he had a case of Covid-19 requiring hospitalization, took got an injection.

        • Sorry about not finishing your whole name Mr. Stuart Nelson Lindberg. I do appreciate reading your points of view.

        • seems like he took hydroxicloriquine ?SP – before the vacine was ready?!?!

          And popped out in a very few days!!

    • Cutting the normal vaccine development time from 5-10 years to nine months isn’t “cutting red tape,” it’s driving without brakes or guardrails. There are NO long-term studies on these vaccines (and those may now never happen, since most participants in the trial placebo groups have now been vaccinated, which destroys the study).

      We’re coming down the case curve now for the same reason we came off it a year ago without vaccines: because that’s what RNA viruses do come warm weather.

      In the meantime, reports of breakthrough cases are increasing, which may explain why the CDC just changed how it counts those cases–by throwing out any that didn’t result in a trip to the hospital and by lowering the PCR cycle threshold for vaccinated people. In other words, by making up a completely different set of rules for counting cases in the vaccinated.

      Trump should have stuck with his guns on hydroxychloroquine, but after bringing it up once he never did so again. Maybe because Big Pharma had other plans.

    • If only there were a virus to quell…or that viruses have been ever been isolated.
      A thing that doesn’t exist being ‘fixed’ by another thing that does exist… for something that has a 99.7% survivability rate and barely in the top dozen of causes of death in the USA:
      https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm

      Leading Causes of Death
      Data are for the U.S.

      Number of deaths for leading causes of death
      Heart disease: 659,041
      Cancer: 599,601
      Accidents (unintentional injuries): 173,040
      Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 156,979
      Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 150,005
      Alzheimer’s disease: 121,499
      Diabetes: 87,647
      Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 51,565
      Influenza and pneumonia: 49,783
      Intentional self-harm (suicide): 47,511
      Source: Mortality in the United States, 2019, data table for figure 2

      The top cause of death is due to sedentary lifestyle, junk food diets, and no moral fiber quite literally – if we understand how health is tied to ‘right living’ – so why are you not as concerned about heart disease?
      THAT you can do something about yourself…or do you prefer a med bed where you let AI fix your body according to ITS model of what humanity should be?

      But lets stick with the itty bitty cough that threatens only those who’ve go co-morbities.
      I feel like I’m a broken record:
      The CDC admits NO VIRUS HAS EVER BEEN ISOLATED.
      So what is the shot FIXING?
      Check the death stats for post-vaxx deaths and rising.
      But go ahead…vax.
      Side effects are: death.
      Acceptable risk?
      Or massive genocide?
      Or is taking the shot a suicide by shot?

  7. Let’s not forget to add the Nuremberg Code which has been used in countless US Supreme Court decisions to uphold a citizens right to bodily autonomy, stating, “The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential”.
    Dear Senator McCormick: I DO NOT CONSENT.

  8. Perhaps it is time for any politician or bureaucrat holding a law license be held accountable to the bar – start filing complaints and begin the process of disbarment. If they do not defend the constitution, uphold the oath of office, abuse their positions, and are obviously corrupt, it would seem to me that would be grounds for disbarment. Perhaps a landslide of complaints submitted to the bar would give them something to do other than tread all over the citizens and the law. The court system is way over due for some real civil action and due process exercises as well as the Vermont Bar Association. They all need to be held accountable for their actions and inactions.

  9. In my correspondence with this man over the years through letters regarding different bills I have noticed that he definitely seems to you enjoy his position of power and is not interested in a dialogue with a constituent . He is not interested in the opinions of the “Little people” – his constituents that pay his salary.
    He is rude, belittling, and aggressive to the point of being bully-ish. Disturbing to say the least.
    Glad to see this being talked about. He has no business being in a position of “leadership”. How in the world does he keep getting reelected?
    Is it time for Vt to do a forensic audit? I think so.
    Vermont can do better.

  10. I hesitate to refer to this man as Senator. At one time many years ago this title was an honored and revered position. Now this clown wants to call the voters stupid because we want our liberties that we are entitled to by GOD and the Constitution of the United State of America. We don ‘t work for you. You work for for the voters. If this simple premise escapes you then its for you to leave politics and make room for someone who does respect the voters. To the voters I say we need to vote people like him out of office. Ignore the articles and emails that ask for donations to help enact term limits. The only ones who can enact term limits are the voters. Anyone who believes these officials will usher in term limits are day dreaming because that would be asking the same people who will do anything to stay in office to help end their own careers. We cannot continue to allow these folks to make life long careers out of something the fore fathers intended to serve a few years and go get a real job after their term is up. Ask yourself another question. How do these people get elected and become millionaires after only a few years in office. A good example of this is Bernie Sanders. How does a representative become a Senator and become a multi millionaire with four houses on their salaries. The only way we are going to save our country is to fire the people who are making bad decisions and enriching themselves at the tax payer expense. The beautiful part of our system is that we can throw bad people out of office and continue to do so until we finally find good people who want to help our country and the voters. We do not have much time left. We have to vote the lifers out and keep doing so until we get good people in.

    • Dennis,
      You can really see the power-hungry politicians in Vermont and their agenda-driven
      politics and Senator McCormack is no different, he knows all and we the people are
      irrelevant, but he has a law degree and no common sense.

      As far as politicians and their fat portfolios that are worth millions on a $200k salary,
      I guess they are really great a personal finances, sure !!. What about the country and
      its citizen’s portfolios ??…..Nah

      Every elected office should have a term limit, let’s see who would stand up and really
      support this idea, just look at Vermont’s three stooges in DC….. part of the problem.

  11. Liberal Dems lie, cheat, and steal, always. Everything they touch, they screw up and they want their mitts on it all.

    • You are so right; here in Rutland County we have Sen Hooker, who is “Holier than Thou”.
      Those who attend St Peters Church know exactly what I mean.
      She and some others back in the day were chief architects of Act 60, which caused a massive upheaval in education financing in VT. Just look at where we are in State Educational funding issues, a severely bloated burocracy and getting worse. And, are we better off now? One only has to look at home schooling, private schools, and Christian Schools, to get the clues.
      These people answer only to themselves, and McCormick along with Hooker and others are the examples. And they never look at retirement willingly. A retirement by the voters is certainly in order.

  12. 100% agree about Senator McCormick, who represents my county.

    Jacobson, 1905, decided that Henning Jacobson had to pay a $5 fine for not taking the smallpox vaccine during an epidemic in Cambridge. It did not state that Jacobson had to get vaccinated against his will. It did not say that the state could impose oppressive penalties in order to force individuals to comply with state medical mandates– to coerce them, to bend them to the state’s will: it stated the exact opposite, that the state could not impose oppressive penalties to force individuals to comply with state medical mandates. Why did it say this? It said this because Jacobson was decided in an era when we were still concerned with liberty and individual self-determination, and concerned with tyrannical overtones that might creep into our government. Even during a smallpox epidemic.

    Covid-19 is nothing even remotely close to as threatening as smallpox was then.

    Senator McCormack is all about state tyranny over the individual. His court case and guiding light isn’t Jacobson 1905; it’s Buck v Bell, 1927, in which the court said to hell with oppression, individuals can and must be sterilized against their will. Because, you see, their liberty ends when ours begins.

    This was a disgrace and abomination, and yet vaccine passports, which is what Senator McCormack is arguing for, are exactly the type of oppression that Buck v Bell– which one legal scholar called a “quiet evil”– represents, and which the Jacobson decision warned against.

    Shame on Senator McCormack.

  13. If Senator McCormick has been vaccinated and he believes the vaccine works, then how is someone who is not vaccinated any threat to his health? The unvaccinated person could only be threat to another unvaccinated person. How about using logic instead of fear Senator?

    • Nobody has ever answered that question!
      People who invoke Science as their god, are the most irrational people in the world.

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