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Dr. Rachel Levine, Failing Up
One of my favorite phrases is “failing up.” That’s when someone who is perceived to be unsuccessful, even a failure, is promoted. People who’ve worked in the federal government know what I’m talking about.
Recently Dr. Anthony Fauci, the 80-year-old, 30+ year head of the National Institute for Infectious Diseases and Allergies – allegedly our nation’s top epidemiologist – has been used, perhaps unfairly, as an example of failing up.
But today, we have a new candidate. Dr. Rachel Levine, President-elect Joe Biden’s announced nominee for Assistant Secretary for Health at the Department of Health and Human Services. It is perhaps the number three position at HHS, responsible for several hugely important agencies, from the Food and Drug Administration to the Public Health Service. It is arguably one of the top scientific positions in all government and the nation’s top health official (although Dr. Fauci was asked to be President Biden’s “chief medical advisor“).
Of course, we know why Dr. Levine was chosen: She is transgender. It has everything to do with politics, and nothing to do with science, and certainly not with competence or integrity. Having lived through Pennsylvania’s horrific mismanagement of the COVID crisis, there is overwhelming evidence that Dr. Levine is grossly unqualified to serve in any position of public trust.
Yet, the minute Dr. Levine is criticized by any public person, they will instantly be accused of bigotry. One dare not mention that Dr. Levine’s gender dysphoria in the context of criticizing the health secretary’s scientific and policy judgments. If you do, the thought police emerge instantly and make Dr. Levin into a victim. I’ve seen it. Just don’t go there.
Every Senate Democrat on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, which will hold a hearing on Dr. Levine’s nomination, will highlight her transgenderism, followed by every single Senate Democratic floor speech once it reaches the full chamber (and it will). That aside, there’s ample ammunition in Dr. Levine’s awful record to torpedo the nomination.
Unfortunately, in a nominally Democrat-controlled Senate, symbolism and politics will trump science and competence. It will be interesting to see which Republicans will go along with Dr. Levine’s confirmation. I’m betting most of them, including Pennsylvania GOP Senator Pat Toomey, but I hope that I am wrong. Watch what happens to Senators who are critical of Dr. Levine.
What follows is but a small sample of Dr. Levine’s failures as noted by Pennsylvania’s leading media. With a record like this, given the responsibilities for vaccine distribution and administration and health policy in general, our nation’s health leadership and infrastructure – and those who depend on it – are in for a very challenging time.
Documents from Montgomery County, Pennsylvania – one of the state’s most populous county in the Philadelphia suburbs, reveal the fear county officials had about Dr. Levine’s and the state’s mismanagement, especially with regard to nursing homes.
Pennsylvania has consistently lagged behind other states in COVID testing.
More than two-thirds of COVID deaths in Pennsylvania occur among aged Americans in long-term care facilities, among the highest in the country. Early in the crisis, Pennsylvania had a plan to deal with that. They not only failed to use it, Dr. Levine and Governor Tom Wolf (D) forced unprepared nursing homes, against their protests, to accept COVID-positive patients.
Perhaps even worse, Dr. Levine and her team quietly changed the death counts as the crisis worsened.
But here’s the coup de grace. As the Pennsylvania COVID nursing home crisis worsened, as Dr. Levine was forcing nursing homes to accept COVID positive patients, she moved her mother out of her nursing home into a luxury hotel. Too bad other Pennsylvania families could not have been afforded the same opportunity.
Pennsylvania’s vaccination rate, despite having one of the highest per capita populations of 65+ Americans, trails many states, including Florida.
There is nothing inspiring about a record or a person like this. It should frighten and alarm you. Dr. Levine should never have been nominated and should have been fired as Pennsylvania’s health secretary months ago.
Now it is time for Americans and the media to hold Senators accountable for the confirmation process and to watch their votes carefully.
Published in General
We must all refuse to participate in the lie. This is so important.
The House has nothing to do with confirmation of executive appointments.
Congrats on the Instapundit link!
Maybe intolerance has time for her/she/him/etc?
This is like a felon stating they have no time for law enforcement.
This is it entirely – it’s throwing the most extreme examples of everything to stake out the far territory, knowing you’ll have to cede some of it back in negotiations. But if you put that stake far enough out, you win.
Republicans will be tripping over themselves to appear tolerant, especially after the Capitol riot. Hell, Senators might end up apologizing to the good Dr. for wasting her time with questions about why she’d sent old people into nursing homes when it’s been established, by scienticians, that that’s a bad idea.
The Democrat puppeteers are having a satisfying and riotous laugh at us now, giving us the finger as they do.
The Peter Principle states that people (even good people) eventually get promoted to a level where they are no longer competent. The Democrat Party takes this one step further and promotes known incompetents to even higher levels of responsibility and authority, levels at which their incompetence is magnified a hundredfold and the results disasterous for thousands, if not millions . . .
Dr. Fauci is not an epidemiologist. Fortunately, you used the term “allegedly.” It is a false allegation. Dr. Fauci is an allergist/immunologist who is a basic researcher in immune and viral diseases. He has no particular expertise in epidemiology. As that is the case, he is not actually of the right qualifications to lead the response to COVID19, which from a policy standpoint would require leadership by an actual epidemiologist. The arguably top 3 epidemiologists in the world, from Oxford, Harvard, and Stanford, and authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, in fact disagree vehemently with Dr. Fauci’s (and the US and Worldwide) policy approach to dealing with COVID19. Perhaps if we did actually listen to the most competent epidemiologists, the outcomes would be better.
Dr Levine is mentally ill, deeply corrupt and of proven incompetence on the grandest level, having issued policies that led to thousands of avoidable deaths.
An indictment is more apt than a government job for this failure of a man.
All of which makes Dr Levine a good fit for the current administration.
My 84 year old MIL in PA has been railing against why staffers in congress, etc. were placed a head of her to be vaccinated. Could it be the people responsible for determining the sequence of roll out consider themselves, and their health more important than what will save the most lives?
But, she’s OK now, she has an appointment for after dark to get hers at a hospital located in a part of town she would never consider going to that late under almost any other circumstances. But by the time she was able to make the appointment, it was the only place and time in town where she could get one, and that trumps waiting to be able to get it later in a safer location. Thanks, Dr. Levine, you’ve only had 10 months to plan this and figure out how to best protect the most vulnerable.
MIL is generally intellectually sharp, but relies too heavily on the legacy media, so when she saw what an historic appointment Dr. Levine is being honored with she was all, “Isn’t that great!” She has no idea how responsible he is for many of the “COVID” deaths or how incompetent.
Regarding Dr. Levine’s credentials, wikipedia not only says pediatrician but, Professor of Pediatrics and Psychiatry at Penn State College of Medicine (not sure I’d even audit a course he was teaching) and that he transitioned in 2011, at the age of 53/54. He obviously wasn’t failing up fast enough as a white male.
Wikipedia leaves out whether he was a pre-lesbian (who fathered two children, at least one of which, based on naming, to which he contributed a Y cromosome). Or perhaps she has now become a heterosexual.
Dr. Rachel Levine at Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center briefing on COVID-19 measures with Governor Tom Wolf June 24, 2020
Question for others with a better background, is the forced smile a tell that the person is probably lying.
If Dr. Levine’s life were to be turned into a play, it would fit perfectly into a high school English course I took, “Theater of the Absurd.” IIRC, the plays we read were a warning against this sort of thing, not a how to manuals. The left is trying their hardest to make this the new normal, but I refuse.
As if we didn’t have enough screwed up kids as it is. If I were 8 years old and this he/she came in to examine me, I might run away from home…
Well with Fauci as her example, I’m not sure how we can expect much logic from this official.
In honor of Biden’s inauguration, Fauci is easing up on the mask requirements.
He is now suggesting this:
Transgender hormone treatment etc for elementary-school children is about to become mandatory…
Failing up is also called the Peter Principle. Though perhaps that term doesn’t apply in this case.
2 + 2 = 5. And if you disagree, you are mentally ill.
You’re getting into Ace of Spades territory. I love it.
Thats one ugly broad.
It surprises me some, because over my lifetime I’ve found the craziest people became psychiatrists/psychologists, not pediatricians. Yes “Dr.” Levine is also a professor of psychiatry (any guesses on teaching “Abnormal Psych?”) but the pediatrician part still surprises me.
Right? I have seen this phenomenon as well.
It seems to be part of a pattern where people seek out “education” to self-medicate, basically. It’s also why so many stupid people become teachers.
She’ll give Joy Behar and Joy Reid a run for their money; that’s for sure…
Ever notice how when more psychologists are pumped out by our bureaucratic higher education system, the more cases of mental illness get “diagnosed?”
It’s a bit puzzling in a way, since you’d figure that crazy people wouldn’t want to increase the categories of craziness, including their own. But then again, if they’re crazy, maybe they don’t realize what they’re doing.
What I’ve seen is a sort of a “therapy addiction,” and becoming therapists themselves helps feed that addiction. But when I worked for a company that did professional mental health seminars, I noticed that many of the speakers were a little . . . nuts.
Yes that’s part of the process too, therapy etc for other people is part of how they’re trying to fix themselves, as with the stupid people who become teachers because somehow inside they think teaching others will make them smarter.
I think it’s more the case of “feeding the beast.” Once a bureaucracy is created, it needs to grow to justify it’s reason to exist, and to pay the hydras that it employs. Most “mental illness” diagnoses comes from public health officials, public schools, etc. Look at how public schools now attack boyhood as an illness that needs to be medicated. Who’s benefiting from this? Only those so-called experts who work in the public sector because their ideas cannot compete in the free market.
Of course, the more “special needs” students a school can create, the more money they get.
Figured I’d make a splash after my three-year absence.