RFK Report Card

An attempt at an even handed look at what RFK is actually saying.

Based only on main stream media coverage, you would not be faulted for thinking that Joe Biden is the only plausible candidate for the 2024 Democratic Presidential nomination. Press slightly deeper and you will find mostly unfavorable coverage of the personal life of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Press further still, and you may find a measured thinker who has read history as well as experienced it first hand, a skilled debater, and a thick skinned candidate for the nomination who would be covered extensively if the sitting president were from another party.

Vaccines

The elephant in the room seems to be vaccines. RFK is not antivax although this is the first and most common criticism which is leveled at him even by people in his own party. A person we spoke to recently even thought he must be gunning for the republican nomination because of this narrative.

RFK stated his stance on vaccines concisely on a NewsNation Townhall, in brief in a Reason interview, and in expanded detail on Joe Rogan.

My stance on vaccines is that vaccines should be tested like other medicines. They should be safety tested.

He credits the lamentable situation we have when it comes to vaccine safety to the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act signed into law by President Ronald Reagan. This law removed any liability for vaccine injury claims from vaccine manufacturers. This was done because Reagan was convinced of the public need to have vaccine pipelines available for emergency use and the liability claims were threatening the manufacturers’ business models. Unfortunately, this created perverse incentives for vaccine manufacturers to churn out more and more vaccines and get them required for children to maximize profits. Without the possibility of expensive downstream liability, there was little incentive to ensure they were safe and effective and so safety testing was elided. In the legislation, the industry admits that vaccines are ‘inherently unsafe’. He aims to reverse this trend by imposing safety testing requirements and placebo controlled trials for vaccines and is an embrace, rather than a rejection, of the science. We require this for other medicines, he wants to extend this requirement to vaccines.

RFK has litigated and won vaccine injury cases so he's no slouch when it comes to the scientific literature covering the subject. Demanding safety testing shouldn't be particularly objectionable even among the most ardent supporters of childhood vaccinations. Liberty Papers gives RFK and A on the subject of vaccines.

War

RFK agrees with Biden on Afghanistan but laments the chaos surrounding the withdrawal. Regardless, he supports the decision to withdraw which is in line with his core anti-war stance. The bottom line is he thinks wars are not making us safer or improving our international relationships. They are also bankrupting the country as we borrow to pay for them. He believes war is causing the current inflation and history bears him out. We've written previously in these papers on the connection between war and inflation.

He opposes the Ukraine war and claims that Putin and Zelenskyy had an opportunity for peace in April of 2021. Boris Johnson was apparently dispatched at the behest of the US State Department to quash the budding peace. Why they would do this risks wandering into speculation but the war apparatus and associated profits may provide clues. He would work to bring peace to Eastern Europe by empathizing with his adversaries in the region. This is not unlike his recipe for restoring domestic peace so we're beginning to learn the character of the man angling for the heaviest responsibility on the planet.

RFK is fundamentally an antiwar presidential hopeful on both moral as well as practical grounds. He remembers when the US was admired and emulated and so some of his motivation seems to be a well intended, albeit atavistic desire to return to simpler times. The other part is economic. He laments that Americans are suffering and going without enough to eat while we spend billions to bail out Silicon Valley Bank and fund adventurism abroad. It's hard to disagree.

Liberty Papers is also antiwar. We believe that wars are damaging our country from a human, economic, and credibility standpoint. RFK gets an A+ from us here.

Drugs

RFK would decriminalize marijuana and psychedelics and would impose a national tax on cannabis products to fund drug treatment centers. The centers would be in rural areas where those undergoing treatment could work the land to grow food and to heal emotionally, spiritually, and physically.

From what we know so far, RFK's stance on ending the war on drugs goes in the right direction but does not go far enough. His approach is a great start but that's all it is. Liberty Papers gives him a B+ on this subject.

Guns

I'll let him tell you directly:

I believe in the Constitution including the second amendment. And practically, I do not believe that within that second amendment that there's anything that we can meaningfully do to reduce the trade and ownership of guns and I'm not going to take people's guns away because telling people I'm going to take their guns away is not practical. Anybody who tells you that they're going to be able to reduce gun violence through gun control at this point, I don't think is being realistic. And I think we have to figure out other ways to do that. I think we have to figure out other ways to reduce that violence. Ultimately, my hope is we can bring Americans together and get them to trust each other and to trust their government again. Every American, whether they're a republican gun carrier or a democrat who believes nobody should own guns, we all want the same thing which is we all want to keep our children safe and we want to keep our neighborhood safe. We need to look at some of the other causes of the violence. One is the division among Americans and the hatred. We need to reduce that. The distrust of government. We need to reduce that. We need to look at the contribution, particularly with school shootings, of some of these psychiatric drugs. I'm not saying they're causing it but there is evidence there. Part of the evidence includes the fact that for SSRIs almost all of them have on their manufacturer inserts among the listed side effects are homicidal and suicidal behavior.

If democrats and republicans got together to create a law to ban a particular type of firearm, RFK would sign it in to law. He said in one of his prior interviews that he believes the Constitution is nonnegotiable so this last point seems to be a departure from that stance. The Supreme Court has already ruled on that matter. Such a law would be unconstitutional.

We've written before on gun rights. He has a practical disposition toward guns but even being conditionally in favor of a weapons ban demonstrates a lack of familiarity with the breadth of the issue and the associated Supreme Court cases. Still, he's pro second amendment and gets a B in this area.

AI

I'll let RFK represent himself on this point.

We're on the verge of a new era with AI technology and it is the most frightening threat. Elon Musk, a couple of years ago once I first started taking notice of him, he said AI is going to first take our jobs and then it's going to kill us and he wasn't using hyperbole. AI has the capacity to do terrible, terrible things to all of us. The only way we're going to prevent that is by bringing all of the smartest AI people in the world into one place and negotiating treaties. We cannot afford to be at war with Russia or with China or with Iran. We need to be figuring out treaties that make AI development ... and have standards that are transparent, that are enforceable, and we all agree on and we're never going to do that when we have military tensions with these nations. We need to be working together right now. It's existential for us.

We've written about AI in these papers and think the level of fear around AI is presently overdone. RFK promulgates the sensationalism of folks like Elon Musk which seems designed to concentrate power of this technology into a cloistered priesthood of mostly self-appointed AI experts. On this subject, RFK gets a C. It think he can be reasoned with on this subject as he becomes more familiar which is why the grade isn't lower.

Rebuilding Trust

Part of his platform is on rebuilding trust in each other and in the government.

RFK:

I'm just going to be rigorous about telling the truth to the American people about everything. The real key to the division is that we're being lied to. When I was a kid, everybody trusted the government. Why? Because the government was telling the truth.

Trust, once lost, is among the most difficult things to regain but if we get an RFK presidency, Liberty Papers will be in suspended disbelief on this one. We want to give him the benefit of the doubt because we share his goals but it will be an uphill slog.

Wanting to rebuild trust, no matter how sisyphean the task, is a noble goal. A+ from us.

RF Radiation, aka light in various forms

RFK has litigated court cases on glioblastomas related to cell phone use and won them but prior to hearing about this, we at Liberty Papers were under the impression that RF emissions, electromagnetic radiation, or more commonly, photons or light were only dangerous to humans if they were in UV frequencies or higher, so-called ionizing radiation. RFK believes that wifi, cell phone, and in particular 5G emissions, which are not ionizing radiation also have detrimental health effects including increasing the permeability of the blood brain barrier, so called “leaky brain”.

We're skeptical of the claims and so are giving RFK a tentative B- on this score. Winning a court case linking cancer to cell phone radiation is a step toward demonstrating the connection but we will take some more convincing.

Pesticides

RFK has litigated and won a case on glyphosate where the injury was nonhodgkins lymphoma but believes that the health impact of this herbicide does not stop there. He believes it causes nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, kidney disease, and damage to the gut microbiome due to the metabolisms of some of those organisms resembling plant metabolisms. Glyphosate is demonstrably an indiscriminate herbicide so all of this lines up with our understanding of the issue and seems extremely plausible.

He cites a study on atrazine where they placed forty male frogs for three years into an enclosure with a level of atrazine considered safe by the EPA. Thirty of the frogs were chemically castrated by the end of the study. Four turned to females and produced fertile eggs. We believed before hearing this that such extreme sexual pressure on frogs over such a long period of time would cause this outcome in nature absent chemical inducements but this is very far outside our wheelhouse. To our readers, we eagerly ask for your help on this issue. Does such a study demonstrate the endocrine system disruption that he's implying? Could this extend to humans? We look forward to your feedback in the comments.

We're with him on glyphosate but not quite on the atrazine. B from us.

Nuclear Power

RFK is against nuclear power on the grounds that, because the industry can't get an insurance policy, that it is too risky, declaring that the insurance industry is the ultimate arbiter of risk. He also believes that nuclear energy is too expensive to be worth it, comparing it to burning prime rib. Finally, he thinks that nuclear waste is a real danger and difficult to deal with. Friend of Liberty Papers, Doomberg has written extensively on this subject. Here are two examples, Nuclear Waste and A Serious Proposal on US Energy.

RFK’s understanding on this subject is tainted by propaganda. On this front, RFK gets an F from us.

Totalitarian Trajectory

RFK believes we're on a “totalitarian trajectory” and this may be where he gets our greatest attention. We started Liberty Papers because of the same latent feeling of a slow descent into increasing authoritarianism and totalitarianism. Any presidential candidate who acknowledges this tendency and wants to push back against it has our sympathies and our energetic support.

A+ here.

Affirmative Action

RFK supports affirmative action. We at Liberty Papers disagreed with affirmative action on principle ever since before we attended college and did not include ethnicity on application forms. We've always wanted to achieve on merits alone or not at all and so we disagree with RFK here. Not everyone should attend colleges and society should support more people going into the trades. We should stop trying to achieve particular ratios of ethnicities in any institutions and just let the chips fall where they may. Equality of opportunity, not of outcome.

His heart is in the right place but that is absolutely irrelevant when it comes to setting fair public policies. D.

Student Loan Forgiveness

RFK supports Biden’s effort to forgive student loans. While we agree that education should be considered an investment in the country and in America's future, we disagree that the country should forgive student loans. There is a great deal of moral hazard involved here and ultimately, student loan forgiveness is a bank bailout with extra steps. The student loan forbearance that was implemented during covid did not relieve the debt burden of recipients who descended deeper into debt despite not having to service their student loans.

The recipe for getting out of debt is productive enterprise. That means GDP and productivity growth at the country level and sweat equity at the individual level. Excessive forbearance on this front teaches the wrong lesson to a young person that success comes not from hard work but from government handouts.

F.

Bitcoin

RFK accepts bitcoin donations and will ensure that Americans' right to hold and use bitcoin is “inviolable”.

Liberty Papers is neutral on bitcoin but agree it should not be outlawed.

A.

Health

RFK is swole. It would be a nice change to have a president who could beat up other presidents if it came down to that. Forget Zuck versus Elon. We want to see Kennedy versus Trudeau.

A.

Grades

• Rebuilding trust: A+

• War: A+

• Totalitarian trajectory: A+

• Vaccines: A

• Health: A

• Bitcoin: A

• Drugs: B+

• Guns: B

• Pesticides: B

• RF radiation: B-

• AI: C

• Affirmative action: D

• Student loan forgiveness: F

• Nuclear power: F

Summary

RFK is eloquent and consistent in his message: rebuild trust, put rigor and evidence behind policies, focus on building America’s economic machine, and get out of wars and adventurism. This is a significant departure from the hit pieces which focus on trying to paint him as a conspiracy theorist or a antivaxxer.

If you’ve made it this far, you have our deep gratitude for reading through our longest piece yet. It may also be an indication of your level of curiosity and patience to listen to some of the things RFK is saying directly from the man himself. If that’s true, start with Rogan. He was by far the most respectful with RFK and listened patiently despite his own reservations. If you still have unsatisfied curiosities after that, then listen to the other appearances. They were less patient and respectful but, if nothing else, you’ll get a sense for his consistency.

In building our notes for this piece, we listened to Rogan three times through, scrutinizing every word trying to find something to be mad about and found nothing. The only frustrations were the behavior of some of the other interviewers in his appearances elsewhere.

Rogan #1999

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