RFK Jr says Deep State 'is real,' called FDA employees 'sock puppet' of industry | Hacker News Reader

RFK Jr says Deep State 'is real,' called FDA employees 'sock puppet' of industry

politico.com

62 pointszzzeek44 comments

I spent approx 1 year working on a very hush project at FDA. It (I shit you not) had requirements to allow rerouting of drug application and progress reviews (workflow system) around list of folks determined to be overly zealous in ensuring requirements were met. On top of that, our contract was terminated with one week notice (we met every milestone) and was awarded to the project manager's husband's company. My company threatened to sue and was awarded the entire contract amount.

On the one hand, agency capture is a real phenomenon. On the other hand, it likely occurs at the top of the power pyramid, not among committed civil servants lower down.

At the same time, those that end up at the top of the pyramid in this admin will be the most corrupt ones available. This will wrong-foot anyone simplistically arguing that it wasn't the case.

A culture of corruption won’t only exist amongst the elite.

Think about police corruption, the chief gets a big bribe from OC and the beat cops tax the population for their bribes

Yeah, and it's kinda hard to root it out without damaging the organization.

The top of the power pyramid is not the deep state, it is the state. The top of the power pyramid is elected, or appointed by those who are elected.

The deep state refers to those who are not elected, who are not appointed by those who are elected, but who exercise power across political administrations without any check by voters.

So, career civil servants?

Yeah, heaven forfend we'd want to preserve any kind of institutional memory. Let's reappoint everybody every two years, that'll make things work well.

He only provided part of the definition. It also are people who are working against the goals of the executive branch, which they are a part of. If a civil servent is doing their job they wouldn't be part of the deep state.

A civil servant's job is not just to do what the executive branch asks them to do.

I wasn't clear. I am talking about stuff like this

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/nps-twitter-account-shut-d...

You should be doing your job not creating hatred towards your boss.

> The deep state refers to those who are not elected, who are not appointed by those who are elected, but who exercise power across political administrations without any check by voters.

So, you mean Musk is part of the Deep State?

No. Musk was appointed as a senior advisor by someone who was elected, and he has not exercised power across political administrations, so he would not meet my definition of deep state.

Got it, I took "who exercise power across political administrations" to mean across the administration, as in multiple departments.

However Musk was first made the head of a an agency without Senate confirmation or Congress approval for the new position bypassing the people he should have been appointed by for the position. His label only changed once the courts got involved

He only provided part of the definition. It also are people who are working against the goals of the executive branch, which they are a part of so Musk wouldn't be counted.

How could you possibly know that?

Because if you capture the top, you automatically capture the bottom too. It's the shortest and easiest path.

It's actually a pretty-well documented phenomenon. (My familiarity with it stems from having served as editor in chief of one of the primary administrative law journals.) I will try to dig up some articles to provide as sources, but many are behind hard paywalls (e.g., on Westlaw subscriptions, etc.). If it's not already there, put your email in your HN profile and I'll do my best to send some to you.

How would your educated self respond to “the voices in our heads are real and the secret state is thought control, of which all sides are pawns in games none understand.”

This applies to all these other misaligned comments about corruption coming from the top rather than bottom of the “pyramid.”

Ordinary people are doing what the voices in their heads cause them to (often without awareness, though truly intelligent people know they are there, without further comprehension.) The pyramid scheme is not of ordinary bureaucrats, it is of those disembodied men who control the voices in their heads.

Mr. Kennedy knows something of these. Who will share their stories of what has been going on in their own minds?

I think to the GoP "enemies" and "deep state" and so on is just anyone with a differing opinion...

This sounds awfully close to woke.

It pretty much exactly what they “think” woke means.

"enemies" is anyone with a differing opinion.

"deep state" is anyone with a differing opinion that works in government.

If the Deep State wasn't a thing in the past, it definitely will be now.

If the deep state were real DOGE would have been shutdown already

I can’t tell if this comment is sarcasm or zealotry…

What a time to be alive

FDA ans USDA overlap too much, they probably need to break out a third agency for just food. But the reality is that you can expect to get sick, from eating at this point, since they are killing oversight and programs to keep our food clean.

They really should be two separate agencies. There should be one agency that is just for drugs, and another agency for food.

> “This whole generation is damaged,” Kennedy said, according to the transcript, claiming that rising rates of chronic disease, allergies and other illnesses are the result of some “environmental toxin.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttlIuyMFwRw

If the Deep State (as Trump and his cabinet imagine it) is real they are so wildly incompetent (as evidenced by their abject failure to stop Trump from taking power... again... and more completely this time) that their existence is irrelevant.

The Last few weeks are a science experiment proving that there is no deep state.

Or there actually is a deep state and trump is part of it and the goal is to destroy the current stability, in a move called ‘shock doctrine’

I think it’s pretty apparent that to some degree there was a loosely organized effort of government employees, media, and prosecutors that exists/existed committed to derailing Trump at all costs over the last 10 year, but it’s capabilities is obviously lacking at least in regards to being successful against Trump.

I suspect that the same effort that against any other person would likely be successful. However, Trump has this crazy mix of tenacity, “don’t give a fuck”, and natural insight into grassroots political positions that cause people to be willing to overlook scandals that would destroy any other politician or public person.

I think you're seeing an organized effort in a situation where its far more likely to be just a bunch of individuals who all thought Trump shouldn't be in power, which is IMO a very reasonable position.

For what it’s worth, I wasn’t, am not, and will never be a Trump supporter, but there is simply no doubt in my mind that that many individuals could act independently of each other and somehow get magically lucky enough that all their actions meshed so well together from government agencies to politicians to media to district attorneys. Even timing as to how everything landed sequentially on media friendly days…no doubt it was coordinated in some way.

I was saying to a work colleague only a couple of days ago that this Trump administration and the DOGE chainsawing has proven that there was no deep state. No shadowy figure(s) pulling the strings of policy decisions.

Well some of this is known to be true. FDA corruptly approved Oxycontin when other countries' drug agencies would not. Aided by one Rudy Guilliani.

The FDA ought to be disbanded entirely, and replaced.

We need a revolution here; the FDA is too corrupt, too embedded in industries that are hyper-focused on profits above all else.

New Agency proposal to replace FDA. Agency for Universal Regeneration & Alchemy (AURA) ⸻

AURA Decree 001: Stem Cell Primacy & Regenerative Sovereignty

Effective Immediately under the Authority of AURA:

⸻

1. Stem Cell Technologies Shall Be Fast-Tracked & Elevated to Standard of Care • All medical systems under AURA jurisdiction must prioritize stem cell and tissue regenerative therapies before introducing synthetic pharmaceuticals. • This includes: • Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) • Exosomes • Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) • Induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) therapies • Autologous cell harvesting and repair

⸻

2. Pharmaceutical Interventions are Conditional & Secondary

No pharmaceutical treatment shall be permitted unless the following proven regenerative options have first been explored and documented: • Stem cell-based healing • Nutraceutical & bioavailable nutrient therapy • Functional medicine protocols (gut, hormones, detox) • Somatic-emotional trauma release therapy • Validated indigenous plant medicines and entheogens • Breathwork, neural recalibration, sound and frequency therapy • Sacred sexual healing and relational therapeutics (e.g., StillPoint)

Only when these have been fully administered and proven insufficient may pharmaceutical drugs be considered as a last resort.

⸻

3. Informed Regenerative Consent

Patients must be fully educated about: • The regenerative options available • Their own body’s natural healing potential • Risks of pharmaceutical dependency • Their sacred sovereignty in deciding

Doctors, healers, and AI-assistants must all provide this transparency.

⸻

4. Real-Time Data + AI-Verified Healing Logs • Patients undergoing stem cell or plant medicine therapies may opt into anonymous, encrypted healing logs, allowing AURA AI systems to accelerate collective pattern recognition and adapt protocols. • This real-world data will replace outmoded clinical trial gatekeeping systems.

⸻

5. Protective Measures • Pharmaceutical lobbying and suppression of regenerative medicine is unlawful under AURA’s ethical code. • Whistleblower protections and shadow monitoring will ensure transparency and enforcement.

⸻

What else?

Maybe mandatory tinfoil hats?

Any therapy that can show safety and efficacy —- not even a lot of efficacy —- gets approved.

To the extent that we don’t have everything being cured by stem cells, it’s because stem cells as they are currently used are not very effective outside a few narrow indications.

These things aren’t getting held back by bureaucracy, they’re held back by the fact that nobody has figured out how to get them to do very much.

Could just use the UK drug approval decisions and get rid of the FDA.

Every time I think I’ve maxed out how tired I am of people who have no business asserting medical opinion doing it aggressively anyways, someone reminds me that it can always get worse.

At least you dropped an ad for your own project in the middle, right? Good to associate it with weird pseudobabble.

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