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The Food and Drug Administration last week authorized Americans 50 and over to get a fourth Covid vaccine dose. Some of the FDA's own experts disagree with the decision, but the agency simply ignored them. Eric Rubin, editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, sits on the advisory committee. He told CNN last month that he hadn't seen enough data to determine whether anyone needs a fourth dose whose immune system isn't seriously deficient. At the crux of the broad opposition to second boosters is the recognition of B- and T-cells, which public-health officials have long ignored. They talk only about antibody levels, which tend to decline in the months after vaccination. B- and T-cells, activated by the primary vaccine series or an infection ... are highly and durably effective at preventing serious illness from Covid. An additional vaccine dose induces a fleeting high in antibody levels, offering only mild and short-lived protection. Two top FDA officials quit the agency in September complaining of undue pressure to authorize boosters. Marion Gruber, former director of the Office of Vaccine Research and Review, and her deputy, Philip Krause, later wrote about the lack of data to support a broad booster authorization. Hours after the FDA authorized the fourth dose, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gave its formal approval to the move–also without convening its external vaccine experts.
Note: To read the full article without a subscription, see this webpage. Read Prof. Mark Skidmore's eye-opening study titled "How Many People Died from the Covid-19 Inoculations?" For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.
Growing evidence for the safety and efficacy of psychedelics could lead to better treatments for anxiety, depression, pain, and other often intractable conditions. Jerry Rosenbaum was intrigued when he first heard about the effect that psilocybin–the hallucinogenic compound found in certain species of mushrooms–was purported to have on the brain's "resting state," what neuroscientists call the default mode network. The default mode network encompasses any neural function that has some bearing on our autobiographical tendencies. When people take psilocybin at low doses, the default mode network becomes less active. That is, the drug appears to tame self-reflection and all but ruin rumination, that obsessive mental state characterized by excessive, repetitive thoughts. Rumination is a hallmark cognitive symptom of depression. Neuroscientists are observing that, when taken in a controlled setting, these substances are beneficial to the brain, especially for people who have certain psychiatric disorders. Landmark studies in 2014 and 2016 showed that LSD and psilocybin alleviated existential anxiety in patients with life-threatening illnesses for up to a year after beginning the treatment. Other studies have shown that ketamine may strengthen neurons against the damage from chronic stress by preventing synapses from being flooded with glutamate, an amino acid that, in excess, withers dendrites. And researchers continue to investigate whether psychedelics are useful as anti-inflammatory agents.
Note: Read more about the healing potentials of psychedelic medicine. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
As universities across the United States face steep enrollment declines, New Mexico's government is embarking on a pioneering experiment to fight that trend: tuition-free higher education for all state residents. After President Biden's plan for universal free community college failed to gain traction in Congress, New Mexico, one of the nation's poorest states, has emerged with perhaps the most ambitious plans. A new state law approved in a rare show of bipartisanship allocates almost 1 percent of the state's budget toward covering tuition and fees at public colleges and universities, community colleges and tribal colleges. All state residents from new high school graduates to adults enrolling part-time will be eligible regardless of family income. The program is also open to immigrants regardless of their immigration status. Some legislators and other critics question whether there should have been income caps, and whether the state, newly flush with oil and gas revenue, can secure long-term funding to support the program beyond its first year. The legislation, which seeks to treat college as a public resource similar to primary and secondary education, takes effect in July. Although nearly half the states have embraced similar initiatives that seek to cover at least some tuition expenses for some students, New Mexico's law goes further by covering tuition and fees before other scholarships and sources of financial aid are applied, enabling students to use those other funds for expenses such as lodging, food or child care.
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is warning of an accelerating mental health crisis among adolescents, with more than 4 in 10 teens reporting that they feel "persistently sad or hopeless," and 1 in 5 saying they have contemplated suicide. The findings draw on a survey of a nationally representative sample of 7,700 teens conducted in the first six months of 2021. They were questioned on a range of topics, including their mental health, alcohol and drug use, and whether they had encountered violence at home or at school. Although young people were spared the brunt of the virus ... they might still pay a steep price for the pandemic, having come of age while weathering isolation, uncertainty, economic turmoil and, for many, grief. In October, the American Academy of Pediatrics declared a national emergency in child and adolescent mental health, saying that its members were "caring for young people with soaring rates of depression, anxiety, trauma, loneliness, and suicidality that will have lasting impacts." In December, Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy issued an advisory on protecting youth mental health. "The pandemic era's unfathomable number of deaths, pervasive sense of fear, economic instability, and forced physical distancing from loved ones, friends, and communities have exacerbated the unprecedented stresses young people already faced," Murthy wrote. "It would be a tragedy if we beat back one public health crisis only to allow another to grow in its place."
Note: This article fails to mention that the steep decline was not caused by COVID, but was largely due to the effects of the lockdowns. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus and health from reliable major media sources.
The Washington Post on Wednesday became the second major news outlet to reverse course and admit that emails from the infamous Hunter Biden laptop are authentic – nine months after it obtained them and a year and a half after the New York Post first reported on them. The paper said two security experts used cryptographic signatures from Google and other technology companies to validate nearly 22,000 emails from 2009 to 2019. Some verified emails involved a deal President Biden's son pursued with the CEFC China Energy conglomerate for which he was paid nearly $5 million. Other verified emails related to his work for the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings, for which Hunter Biden was paid as much as $83,333 or a month, or $1 million a year. In October 2020, the New York Post exclusively revealed the existence of Hunter Biden's emails after being given a copy of the hard drive from a damaged MacBook Pro laptop that the owner of a repair shop in the Biden family's hometown of Wilmington, Del., said was dropped off in April 2019. Following the expose, the Washington Post's "Fact Checker" feature said the paper "has not been able to verify or authenticate these emails" and said there were "fears that the emails could be part of a broader disinformation campaign" by Russia. The paper said it [made] two copies of the hard drive so they could be analyzed by Matt Green, a Johns Hopkins University security researcher, and Jake Williams, a forensics expert and former National Security Agency operative.
Note: For a detailed timeline on Biden's laptop, see this Washington Post article. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on media manipulation from reliable sources.
Kyrie Irving has always described his decision to remain unvaccinated, and as a result miss nearly two-thirds of the season, as a personal choice. But on Sunday night, after his first game at Barclays Center this season, his comments about that decision expanded beyond the personal. "The point of this season for me was never to just take a stance," he said. "It was really to make sure that I'm standing in what I believe in, in freedom. Freedom – I don't think that's a word that gets defined enough in our society, about the freedom to make choices with your life without someone telling you what the [expletive] to do ... There's nobody that's enslaving me." He added: "Tonight my presence out there was bigger than a basketball game – just representing a lot of individuals that are out there in a similar situation as me, and now that I can play, I think we should be opened up for everybody." That, of course, currently is the focus of controversy. Originally, Irving could not play because of a since-repealed mandate that dictated that people entering indoor entertainment venues had to be vaccinated. After that ended on March 7, a different mandate came into focus: a private-sector mandate that had gone into effect on Dec. 27 and stated that all those who do in-person work or interact with the public in their employment also need to be vaccinated. As a result, nearly 1,500 city workers were fired in February. It's not clear how many private workers also were fired.
Note: If you are unable to read the entire article, you can also find it on this webpage. Irving is a seven-time All-Star and three-time member of the All-NBA Team. He won an NBA championship with the Cavaliers in 2016. Read also Prof. Mark Skidmore's eye-opening study titled "How Many People Died from the Covid-19 Inoculations?" For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.
Evan, a middle-class Black man, doesn't come across as a psychedelic enthusiast. He's a 23-year-old quantitative economics graduate student who takes pride in steaming his sweater vests to maintain a studious appearance. In 2015, Evan's father was arrested for misdemeanor drug possession. A teenager at the time, he swore off drugs forever. But six years later, magic mushrooms have become Evan's remedy to cope with racial trauma. Like most Americans, Evan followed the widespread media coverage of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor's deaths in 2020. And like many Black Americans, he experienced traumatic-stress symptoms triggered by the constant exposure to cases of police brutality and racial discrimination. Debilitating panic attacks incapacitated him multiple times a day; insomnia drained his ... energy. After unsuccessfully trying three different anti-anxiety medications, he finally stumbled upon a study on psychedelics for racial trauma. He wondered: could psychedelic therapy be the solution? Psilocybin, the active compound in magic mushrooms, has been found to mitigate acute anxiety among patients with life-threatening cancer. A state-sponsored study in Texas is investigating psychedelics as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder in veterans. But one lesser-known benefit has been documented by researchers at the University of Ottawa: psychedelics may alleviate symptoms of race-based traumatic stress.
Note: Read more about the healing potentials of mind-altering drugs. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
The low rate of coronavirus infections, hospitalizations and deaths in West and Central Africa is the focus of a debate that has divided scientists on the continent and beyond. If Covid has in fact done less damage here, why is that? The answers "are relevant not just to us, but have implications for the greater public good," said Austin Demby, Sierra Leone's health minister. The assertion that Covid isn't as big a threat in Africa has sparked debate about whether the African Union's push to vaccinate 70 percent of Africans against the virus this year is the best use of health care resources. In the first months of the pandemic, there was fear that Covid might eviscerate Africa, tearing through countries with health systems as weak as Sierra Leone's, where there are just three doctors for every 100,000 people. New research shows there is no longer any question of whether Covid has spread widely in Africa. It has. Studies that tested blood samples for antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 ... show that about two-thirds of the population in most sub-Saharan countries do indeed have those antibodies. Since only 14 percent of the population has received any kind of Covid vaccination, the antibodies are overwhelmingly from infection. A new W.H.O.-led analysis ... found that 65 percent of Africans had been infected. A research project at Njala University in Sierra Leone has found that 78 percent of people have antibodies for this coronavirus. Yet Sierra Leone has reported only 125 Covid deaths since the start of the pandemic.
Note: Could it be that widespread use of the antimalarial drug chlorequine kept many Africans from getting sick? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 966,575 deaths from COVID-19 on Friday after it corrected the data earlier this week, which reduced the death tallies in all age-groups, including children. The health agency, in a statement to Reuters, said it made adjustments to its COVID Data Tracker's mortality data on March 14 because its algorithm was accidentally counting deaths that were not COVID-19-related. The adjustment resulted in removal of 72,277 deaths previously reported across 26 states, including 416 pediatric deaths, CDC said. The reduction cut the CDC's estimate of deaths in children by 24% to 1,341 as of March 18. Children accounted for about 19% of all COVID-19 cases, but less than 0.26% of cases resulted in death, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, which summarizes state-based data. Americans have been polarized over the mitigation measures the CDC recommended for schools during the pandemic from urging schools to be remote, require masks and set up social distancing measures. It now advises that for most of the country, children should be in school and can be without masks.
Note: For lots more on this highly strange news, see this webpage. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.
Americans are losing hold of a fundamental right as citizens of a free country: the right to speak their minds and voice their opinions in public without fear of being shamed or shunned. How has this happened? In large part, it's because the political left and the right are caught in a destructive loop of condemnation and recrimination around cancel culture. Many on the left refuse to acknowledge that cancel culture exists at all. Many on the right ... have embraced an even more extreme version of censoriousness as a bulwark against a rapidly changing society, with laws that would ban books, stifle teachers and discourage open discussion in classrooms. In a new national poll commissioned by Times Opinion and Siena College, only 34 percent of Americans said they believed that all Americans enjoyed freedom of speech completely. The poll found that 84 percent of adults said it is a "very serious" or "somewhat serious" problem that some Americans do not speak freely in everyday situations because of fear of retaliation or harsh criticism. 46 percent of respondents said they felt less free to talk about politics compared to a decade ago. Only 21 percent of people reported feeling freer, even though in the past decade there was a vast expansion of voices in the public square through social media. At the same time, 22 percent of adults reported that they had retaliated against or were harshly critical of someone over something he or she said.
Note: While the above article focuses on individual actions and perceptions, social media companies like Facebook prioritize angry, divisive content and sometimes censor mainstream news stories. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on media corruption from reliable sources.
In this troubled time of war and pandemic, the World Happiness Report 2022 shows a bright light in dark times. According to the team of international researchers, including McGill University Professor Christopher Barrington-Leigh, the pandemic brought not only pain and suffering but also an increase in social support and benevolence. "COVID-19 is the biggest health crisis we've seen in more than a century," says Professor John Helliwell of the University of British Columbia. "Now that we have two years of evidence, we are able to assess not just the importance of benevolence and trust, but to see how they have contributed to well-being during the pandemic." Helliwell adds "We found during 2021 remarkable worldwide growth in all three acts of kindness monitored in the Gallup World Poll. Helping strangers, volunteering, and donations in 2021 were strongly up in every part of the world, reaching levels almost 25% above their pre-pandemic prevalence. This surge of benevolence, which was especially great for the helping of strangers, provides powerful evidence that people respond to help others in need, creating in the process more happiness for the beneficiaries, good examples for others to follow, and better lives for themselves." For the fifth year in a row Finland takes the top spot as the happiest in the world. This year its score was significantly ahead of other countries in the top ten. Denmark continues to occupy second place, with Iceland up from 4th place last year to 3rd this year.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
The Kindness Test involved over 60,000 people from 144 different countries around the world, making it the largest public study of kindness ever carried out. You can listen to the full rundown of the results in the three-part BBC Radio 4 documentary, The Anatomy of Kindness, airing this month. The research will also soon be submitted for publication so their findings can be used to forward research in the future. Here are a few interesting findings from the test. Kinder people, or simply people who are more aware of kindness experience higher levels of life satisfaction and wellbeing. Two-thirds of participants believe the pandemic has made people kinder, perhaps by giving us a collective struggle that increased our empathy for each other. The study also found that nearly 60 percent of the people who partook in the research claimed to have received an act of kindness within the previous day. "It is a big part of human nature, to be kind – because it's such a big part of how we connect with people and how we have relationships," says Claudia Hammond, study collaborator. "It's a win-win situation, because we like receiving kindness, but we also like being kind." The overarching trend from the data is that your personality determines how kind you are to others and also how kind they are to you. People who are open to new experiences, agreeable, like talking to strangers, or are extraverted all reported higher levels of kindness in their lives.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
A remote and unique indigenous population in the Bolivian Amazon called the Tsimane (pronounced chee-MAH-nay) sparked the interest of scientists when they were found to show almost no cases of age-related heart disease. Since then, scientists have carried out various studies into the Tsimane community due to their exceptional health even in old age. In 2017, researchers from The Tsimane Health and Life History Project were astonished to find that the elderly Tsimane experienced unusually low levels of vascular aging, and a study in The Lancet reported that the average 80-year-old Tsimane adult demonstrated the same vascular age as a 55-year-old American. Researchers are now looking into the brain health of the Tsimane community, in particular the prevalence of dementia. Only five cases of dementia were detected, which equates to about one percent of the population studied–significantly below the 11 percent of the equivalent American population known to be living with dementia. Researchers also studied 169 individuals hailing from the Moseten community, a community genetically and linguistically similar to the Tsimane. The Moseten also showed very low levels of dementia, even though they lived in closer proximity to modern Bolivian society. "Something about the pre-industrial subsistence lifestyle appears to protect older Tsimane and Moseten from dementia," says Margaret Gatz, lead author of the study.
Note: The profoundly inspiring documentary "Alive Inside" presents the astonishing experiences of elderly individuals with severe dementia who are revitalized through the simple experience of listening to music that meant something to them in their earlier years. Featuring experts including renowned neurologist/best-selling author Oliver Sacks and musician Bobby McFerrin, this beautiful portrait of senile patients coming back to life was the winner of Sundance Film Festival Audience Award.
The situation for India's more than 260 million agricultural workers is dire. Nearly 30 people in the farming sector die by suicide daily, according to the most recent figures available, typically due to overwhelming debt. Indeed in 2020, more than 10,000 people in the agricultural sector ended their own lives, according to government data. India's economic backbone – its farmers and their families – is in collapse. They face crushing pressures: insurmountable debt, environmental degradation, and extreme rates of cancer linked to exposure to pesticides. This strain is compounded by climate change and extreme weather – from ground water depletion to water shortages and crop damage due to rising temperatures – effects which have been tied to increasing suicides in India. Many are subsistence farmers who are drowning in the volatility caused by the Green Revolution which began in the 1960s as a way of industrializing the agriculture sector with high yielding seeds, mechanized tools and pesticides. In some cases, farmers cannot work their land due to illness linked to the revolution's pesticides and fertilizers. They are dealing with deep-rooted battles against multinational corporations. And all the while having to take out loans each year to make the agricultural cycle possible. And then, when farmers are unable to get loans from legitimate banks, illegal moneylenders ... step in, charging exorbitant interest rates and creating an inescapable debt-trap for farmers, in some instances pushing them to suicide.
Note: Watch a compelling talk by food sovereignty advocate Vandana Shiva, who explains how the "Green Revolution" doesn't bring any gain in food security, and has done more harm than good in India. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption from reliable major media sources.
A group of US pilots has filed a lawsuit over the country's federal mask mandate, which stipulates that all passengers must wear a face covering on public transport, including on flights and at airports. The 10 pilots span several airlines – JetBlue, Southwest Airlines and American Airlines – and claim that the Federal Transportation Mask Mandate is "an illegal and unconstitutional exercise of executive authority." Filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, the suit alleges that the mask mandate, first introduced in February 2021, has caused "chaos", and claims the CDC "ignored countless scientific and medical studies" disproving the effectiveness of masks in preventing the spread of Covid-19. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) data shows that masks have been linked to a surge in disruptive passenger behaviour on board American flights - of 5,981 onboard disputes recorded on the country's airlines last year, 72 per cent were related to masks. The plaintiffs have also requested that authorities "remove all signs informing passengers" to wear a mask, and that they be awarded any costs and fees they incurred within the course of the suit. Following an extension last week, the mask mandate is currently due to stay in place until at least 18 April. The news comes after an announcement from London's Heathrow airport that passengers are no longer required to wear a face covering. The change applies across all of Heathrow's terminals, bus and railway stations and office spaces.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.
Congress passed a bill last week explicitly prohibiting federal law enforcement officers from having sex with people in their custody, closing a loophole that previously allowed them to avoid a rape conviction by claiming such an encounter was consensual. The legal loophole gained widespread attention in 2018, after an 18-year-old woman in New York, Anna Chambers, said that two detectives raped her inside their police van. The detectives, who have since resigned, said she consented. Prosecutors ultimately dropped the sexual assault charges, and the men were sentenced to five years of probation after pleading guilty to bribery and official misconduct. In February 2018, BuzzFeed News reported that laws in 35 states allowed police officers to claim that a person in their custody consented to sex, and that of at least 158 law enforcement officers charged with sexual assault, sexual battery, or unlawful sexual contact with somebody under their control from 2006 to 2018, at least 26 were acquitted or had charges dropped based on the consent defense. Last week ... the Closing the Law Enforcement Consent Loophole Act passed the House and Senate as part of a broader appropriations bill. The act also requires states that receive certain federal grants to annually report to the Department of Justice the number of complaints alleging a sexual encounter between a local law enforcement officer and a person in their custody. The ... Act applies to the 100,000 or so law enforcement officers across all federal agencies.
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Pools and streams and springs course and seep and drip. The waters sparkle with clarity and are achingly cold. Moisture glazes the rocks with an ineffable shine. The air is scented with wet, the tread underfoot softened with it. The tiered branches and filtered light create a realm of soft sounds and the feeling of a living dream of green, blue and brown, one ridge and hill of forest easing to the next. There are trees from sprouts to the ancients that have gained a look attained only at great age. Their bark flakes and shreds, and trunks soar to an apse raised over centuries. The soil is darker than coffee grounds, inky, sweet and redolent of fructifying forest funk. "This is the gold," [forest ecology professor Suzanne] Simard said, as she crumbled the soil in her hands, and teased apart filaments within it, finer than a human hair. These are fungal threads. Simard discovered in pioneering research they wind through these soils in a web of connections from tree to tree, sharing nutrients and water. Simard and others have revealed that trees also can recognize their own kin in seedlings they preferentially shuttle nutrients to, through the fungal network. In research published in the New Phytologist in 2016, Simard and her collaborators demonstrated carbon transfer – crucial food – was three to four times greater in kin than in nonkin pairings of Douglas fir seedlings. Kinship increased both the likelihood of establishment of a symbiotic relationship between kin linked by a fungal network, and its robustness.
Note: Watch a great TED Talk by this intrepid scientist showing how forests are much more interconnected than we might imagine. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
As Russia perpetrates war crimes against the people of Ukraine, the fossil fuel industries in Colorado and across the country are licking their collective chops and preparing to cash in on the crisis, likely generating yet another round of record profits in adherence to one of the most famous maxims, often attributed to Winston Churchill, "Never let a good crisis go to waste." The price of gasoline is high right now. Big Oil is exploiting the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its effects on the price of gas to run up record profits. At the end of 2021, BP, Exxon Mobil, Shell, and Chevron all reported the highest profits they've seen since 2014, and every single company attributed those record profits to surging oil prices as post-pandemic demand increased and supply had not yet met that demand. Last week, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki pointed out that U.S. oil companies are sitting on over 9,000 federal drilling permits, claiming that these should be tapped before additional leases are granted. The industry balked, arguing that "developing a lease takes years and substantial effort to determine whether the underlying geology holds commercial quantities of oil and/or gas," undermining their own point while they're making it: if it takes so long to produce oil from a new lease, how on earth would issuing new leases have any discernible effect on gas prices today? When record-high prices coincide with record profits, as they almost always do, it is lunacy to ignore the obvious connection between the two.
Note: Explore an alternative viewpoint on the Ukrainian situation from a respected source. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.
What is it, exactly, that makes us kind? Why are some of us kinder than others – and what stops us from being kinder? The Kindness Test, a major new study involving more than 60,000 people from 144 different countries, has been looking into these and other questions. It is believed to be the largest public study of kindness ever carried out in the world. The results, which are currently the subject of a three-part Radio 4 documentary The Anatomy of Kindness, suggest that people who receive, give or even just notice more acts of kindness tend to experience higher levels of wellbeing and life satisfaction. Other encouraging findings are that as many as two-thirds of people think the pandemic has made people kinder and nearly 60% of participants in the study claimed to have received an act of kindness in the previous 24 hours. Luke Cameron, dubbed the "nicest man in Britain", once spent a year doing a good deed every day. It taught him that sometimes offering some help, reassurance or a kind word can make a huge difference. "It's made me more aware of things that happen in front of me. If someone falls over in the street, there's always going to be people who go and help and others who stand back. It's made me one of those people who go and help. Consciously, I now just do it." He became that person, he says, after a "mindset shift" where he realised: "Actually, if it was me, I'd want somebody to help me. That makes you think differently about how you are with people."
Note: Listen to "The Anatomy of Kindness" on BBC4. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
The lobbying industry had a record year in 2021, taking in $3.7 billion in revenue as companies, associations and other organizations pressed Congress and the Biden administration over trillions of dollars in new pandemic spending and rules affecting health care, travel, tourism and other industries. The revenue figures, compiled in recent weeks from government records by OpenSecrets, show that lobbying spending began steadily growing in 2017. The jump in 2021, when lobbying spending was about 6 percent higher than 2020, came as the government's pandemic interventions and record expenditure took center stage. The surge came as companies and associations aimed to roll back regulations on their industries – many of them pandemic-related – while others vied for a slice of the trillions in new spending. Manufacturers, unions, financial companies and technology firms all spent significantly more in 2021 than in previous years. Thousands of companies and organizations appeared to hire lobbyists for the first time during the pandemic, as more than 3,700 companies and other groups that spent no money lobbying the government in 2019 paid lobbyists last year. The pharmaceutical industry, regularly one of the biggest spenders in Washington, also increased its spending. Its top trade group, the Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), topped $30 million in spending last year, up 17 percent from the year prior.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.
Important Note: Explore our full index to key excerpts of revealing major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.