When, in the course of human events, it becomes possible for voters to place in high office a convicted criminal exhibiting florid symptoms of dementia, it behooves those who labor—and occasionally frolic—under the protections of the First Amendment, to scrutinize the person who will assume the office, should the principal become so incapacitated that even CNN and the New York Times no longer ignore his gibbering incoherence.
As one might expect, given the person atop the ticket, by offering up Ohio’s junior Senator, Republicans are not sending their best. Their best have already self-deported. In fact, the previous occupant of the position to which JD Vance aspires has declined to endorse his former boss.
Comedian Zack Bornstein offered Vance a tip, relevant to anyone handing out resumes: “Always ask why the position is open.” An accompanying photo was subtle: a smiling Mike Pence, with nary a guillotine in sight.
Vance presents himself as an exemplar of the American Dream. Having triumphed over an impoverished Appalachian childhood as the son of a drug-addicted single mother, joined the U.S. Marines, attended Yale, and became a venture capitalist—a journey he facilitated by repeatedly throwing his mother under the bus.
We have not seen it, but Vance has reportedly made a campaign ad in which he blames his mother’s drug addiction on illegal immigrants. In fact, his mother’s dependence on drugs had nothing to do with immigration, and a lot with drugs made by Purdue Pharmaceuticals, which she stole from her patients.
If we set aside the provenance of his mother’s stash, a question for Vance remains: if illicit drugs coming across the border are a problem, why did you and your Republican colleagues in the Senate kill the immigration bill which would have funded fentanyl detection devices at the ports of entry where 90 percent of the stuff comes in?
Don’t bother to reply, everybody knows the answer: to prolong the problem, so that he, and you, can get elected.
Vance was so concerned about the evils of drug addiction that in 2017 he started a non-profit to fight it.
Called “Our Ohio Renewal,” the 501(c)(4) “focused on education, addiction, and other ‘social ills’ he had mentioned in his memoir,” according to Wikipedia.
Other sources say otherwise. According to OurOhioRipoff.com, “the only person the organization helped was Vance himself.”
That website, which provides links to its sources, says “According to a Business Insider investigation, Vance’s non-profit spent no money on programs to fight the opioid epidemic. A non-profit expert called the non-profit a ‘charade’ and ‘superficial,’ lambasting the team for ‘sitting around doing nothing.’”
The rule for doctors is, “First, do no harm.” Non-profits are not doctors, though, so they get a pass.
One of the few things Vance’s non-profit did, according to OurOhioRipoff, was to “sponsor a yearlong fellowship for Dr. Sally Satel,* best known for being a key player in Purdue Pharma’s PR campaign to downplay the risks of OxyContin. Dr. Satel shared drafts of her articles with Purdue Pharma officials and Purdue’s PR firm prepped and recommended her for interviews with national media.
“Instead of working to find solutions to the opioid epidemic, Vance’s non-profit dedicated 96.4 percent of its funding to staff salaries and overhead in its first year. Jai Chabria, the non-profit’s principal officer, earned more in management fees than the organization spent in programming. Now, after doing nothing to solve this crisis, Jai Chabria has taken on a new position as Vance’s top political advisor in his run for U.S. Senate.
“What was Vance doing instead of working on his non-profit to address the opioid crisis? Promoting himself and fielding a poll on his future political ambitions.”
If making Vance a viable candidate was Our Ohio Renewal’s real aim, it missed the target. His most-memorable moment in the debate came after a moderator noted that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio have legal status.
“The rules were that you guys weren’t going to fact-check,” he complained. Imagine that—trying to force a Republican to stick to the truth. How rude!
Tim Walz asked Vance the most telling question: “Did he [Trump] lose the 2020 election?” Vance replied with a mess of words which did not constitute an answer.
In other news, Vance’s running mate was in Erie, Pa. on Sunday, proposing to end a non-existent crime wave with an American Kristallnacht: “one really violent day… one rough hour. And I mean real rough.”
Rough? What’s rough is knowing that any of this is really happening.
* This is not Dr. Satel’s first appearance in these pages. In 2006 this American Enterprise Institute “scholar” was arguing that the Department of Veterans Affairs was being too generous in diagnosing PTSD among veterans. When not striving to sweep the consequences of war under the Oval Office’s carpet, she has found time to claim that secondhand smoke is less harmful than people think, and that silicone-filled breast implants despite their suspected links to kidney failure, are actually quite safe. Dr. Satel herself sports a transplanted kidney.