This market will settle as YES if Trump wins the presidency and he nominates Robert F Kennedy to a cabinet position by January 31, 2025.
1,000
3.00Mr. Hanania clarified 1 month ago that this market is resolving to the "announced" column. Then linked this. Here is a New York Times article from Dec 8 which confirms Joe Biden announced Tom Vilsack as Secretary of Agriculture nominee. Here is a recent article also from New York Times with the title "Trump Picks R.F.K. Jr. to Be Head of Health and Human Services Dept."
The https://www.senate.gov/legislative/nominations_new.htm page will likely not be updated until Trump is inaugurated on Jan 20 at the earliest. When it is updated the "announced" column will be backed filled with accurate dates. I expect RFK's will be Nov 14.
The earliest date Joe Biden announced nominees was Nov 23. Trump is already making his announcements. If you look under the received column, Joe did all his on Jan 20, 2021. Trump is likely to do the same. That means even if this market was resolving to the actual nomination the only way for it to resolve No would be if RFK died between now and then.
Manifold generally handles markets that have contradictory titles/descriptions/clarifications made by the market creator, with the following logic: Clarifications made by the market creator supersedes the description which supersedes the title.
As a trader I find it important to read each and every comment on a market, the description and ask and receive clarification before betting. If I don't and place a bet I do so at the risk of losing the mana/sweepcash to a technicality.
It has been clear and unambiguous that this market would be resolving to the announcement and not actual nomination of RFK to a cabinet post, which HHS is, for almost a month. I understand some of you are frustrated, but please consider that Mr. Hanania explained well in advance how this market would be resolving.
The only thing I think could have been done better is if the clarification would have been pinned and title/description updated.
@PuckMinder Pinned or not, posting a comment warning that you plan to resolve a market in clear conflict with the plain and unambiguous meaning of the language in the title and rules isn't an excuse to do so.
If the creator had commented, "By Trump I meant Harris and by RFK I meant Merritt Garland, so fair warning!" it would only be mildly more ridiculous to expect that to control settlement.
It goes without saying that no one's been nominated (in any plausible stretch of the word relevant to this process) and that no one can be until at least Jan. 20.
@TheAllMemeingEye The article cites his experience as an environmental lawyer.
https://www.politico.com/story/2008/11/obama-considers-stars-for-cabinet-015320
@TheAllMemeingEye Environmental lawyer, democrat (until recently), and that was sixteen years ago. That doesn’t seem surprising at all.
@TimothyBandors Relative to what? Everybody recognizes Kennedy has changed a lot in the last few years. Reading 2008 in light of 2024 is not very informative.
@RichardHanania I think that's an acceptable interpretation, but it also seems like many people interpreted "nomination" to mean something more formal.
@TimothyJohnson5c16 yeah, I think of nomination as being the thing that triggers the Senate confirmation heating. If the Senate doesn't have a hearing, I think the market should resolve no.
@EricNeyman Absolutely not. A withdrawn nomination wouldn't go to a hearing, but would still count as a nomination. I also thought there was some more-formal process by which nominees became nominees, but by the look of it that's not the case and it is just as simple as him naming someone? I don't think there's an official document or anything.
@Marnix According to this source, the president "sends a formal nomination to the Senate." My guess is that this is a letter, though I'm not sure. That's what I'd be looking for to resolve this market.
@RichardHanania Shouldn’t you at least wait until he’s actually president? To me this sounds like him announcing he will nominate RFK Jr. But he can’t actually nominate anyone until he’s president because he lacks the power to do so. Nominating, even if it were not a formally defined act, is a speech act. It has success conditions. And I don’t think president-elect is sufficient.
@RichardHanania That's okay. We love our political scientists despite, not because of their attention to detail.
@RichardHanania yeah I agree it should be that he sends the nomination, or makes a recess appointment, by 1/31. Just saying he'll do it isn't the same thing as doing it. For example, given what Trump has already said, if he takes no further action on this there is no path for RFK to actually become the secretary.
I am enjoying the lib tears, but the vilification of RFK is dumb. If you look at his actual positions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Kennedy_Jr._2024_presidential_campaign he isn't far from a typical Dem politician? Libs could even get the totalistic EU-style single payer healthcare they have always dreamed of.
@skibidist He is antivax, anti-fluoride, generally just a complete crazy person when it comes to public health. It is not the minister of health's job to implement single payer healthcare, I don't know why you think that's relevant to his appointment
@Tumbles But he is not anti-vaccine. He says so every time the topic comes up. He has been against specific covid measures and rushed vaccines, which imo shows good judgement. Seems like there are valid concerns around fluoridation and lots of debate in scientific journals. I am not sure what you mean about it being not being relevant. If you are referring to the cabinet being an executive rather than legislative body, it seems like too narrow a view.
@skibidist There are no serious debates about fluoridation lmao, public water fluoridation is probably the 5th most-beneficial public health innovation of all time behind plumbing, handwashing, vaccination, and iodized salt. It accomplishes its goal efficiently and extremely cheaply, it's a canonical way to accomplish that goal (basically nothing else would work even a tenth as well), and it has ~0 downsides. The second point is just a fact about government function, the Health Secretary doesn't have any sort of say in how people pay for healthcare. That's a money question, not a health question, and it's more-or-less impossible to imagine a scenario where Ted Cruz and co. are tapping RFKJR for advice on this topic (or any topics, really, he's not respected by party insiders)
@speck Not convinced. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/11/12/fluoride-water-rfk-jr-trump-public-health/
I think Trump can push through pretty much any legislation he wants, and definitely one that would have support of many Democrats. I don't know if he is interested in this particular idea. He might be. He wants to create a public university, so why not this.
Not saying this is likely, just possible. I believe Trump is giving the secretary title to RFK simply in exchange for the endorsement during campaign and I doubt it comes with any policy commitments.
The screenshot is just something I saw on Twitter earlier, but it's consistent from what I've seen from him previously. RFK ABSOLUTELY is into heavy vaccine conspiracy theory nonsense. It's true that in recent months on the campaign trail he will say he "isn't anti vaccine" to avoid backlash, but if you listen to any time he actually gets into the topic the man is off his rocker and absolutely thinks vaccines in general do more harm than good.
@Tumbles The screenshot does sound unhinged. I would like to know if the actual book says this, because I have seen enough of grotesque misconstructions of Trump's words to see how a relatively benign text could be paraphrased in this way.
I grabbed a PDF. 5G occurs exactly once in the body of the book, in the following sentence (yes, it's all a single sentence):
Ellison, Gates, and the other members of this government/industry collaboration used the lockdown to accelerate construction of their 5G network of satellites, antennae, biometric facial recognition, and “track and trace” infrastructure
It is true that COVID accelerated 5G adoption. Investment bank memos write about it. Bill Gates did invest in it. RFK may be conflating infrastructure layer with the application layer a little, but he is just a lawyer.
that they, and their government and intelligence agency partners, can use to mine and monetize our data, further suppress dissent, to compel obedience to arbitrary dictates, and to manage the rage that comes as Americans finally wake up to the fact that this outlaw gang has stolen our democracy, our civil rights, our country, and our way of life
Yes, the existence of widespread cellular connectivity was what enabled COVID passes and similar things, which indeed many consider to have been a violation of fundamental freedoms. Could have been done with 4G, but that's inconsequential.
—while we huddled in orchestrated fear from a flu-like virus.
Essentially true. The government did air ads that were meant to inspire fear. It was officially admitted multiple times. Both coronaviruses and influenza viruses are RNA viruses that cause respiratory infections, so they are alike.
The text does not seem to link manufacturing evidence against the two drugs with the intent to expand the 5G network as your screenshot implies.
I think it's quite smart to write factually correct sentences in an emotional language sprinkled with keywords such as 5G in order to manipulate people whom creator of this market might label as low human capital.
The high human capital gets manipulated just as much, only in words that sound smarter.
@skibidist Now that you downloaded the book, can you confirm/deny the stuff about the vaccine conspiracy funding studies that made ivermectin, chloroquine look bad?
Used the lockdown to accelerate construction of their 5G network of satellites, ....
The implication of this is that the lockdown wasn't primarily intended to help people, but instead a capitalist conspiracy to maximize their wealth. Is this something you believe?
@skibidist I see an opinion piece and several studies showing that water fluoridation can have negative effects at around 2.5x the current concentration in the US. Am I missing something, or did you expect this to be convincing?
(For the record, natural experiments in Canada and Chile show that fluoridation cuts cavity frequency and severity roughly in half, cuts child mortality from tooth rot by 85%, and has no effect on IQ)
The implication of this is that the lockdown wasn't primarily intended to help people, but instead a capitalist conspiracy to maximize their wealth. Is this something you believe?
@ian Personally, I think it was neither. There was no plan behind it, whether benign or nefarious. Decision makers blindly rushed to copy China.
I don't agree that this is the implication of RFK's words. I read them like "Zoom used lockdowns to increase its userbase" or
London Mayor Sadiq Khan said extremists had used the lockdowns to "spread disinformation"
Concerning the vaccine conspiracy related to HCQ and IVM.
RFK Jr. believes that Fauci and Gates are members of a “vaccine cartel”
Indeed, RFK writes about "powerful vaccine cartel—led by Dr. Fauci and Bill Gates". Is it justified to talk about a vaccine "cartel"? It is a reasonable opinion given that leading pharma companies have been found to participate in cartels before (e.g. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_5104).
trying to kill patients by denying them hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin.
I don't find direct support for RFK saying this, but I am just CTRL+F'ing. The whole book is about it, and it's 800 pages long. If he does say it, I think he does it indirectly, by claiming HCQ and IVM have better outcomes than lockdowns and vaccines. Are the two drugs effective against COVID? I don't know, but Wikipedia states that "As of 2024, scientific evidence does not substantiate the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine, with or without the addition of azithromycin, in the therapeutic management of COVID-19" in the lede, citing Indian Journal of Community Medicine, which has an impact factor of 0.9. However, further down, the article states:
In August 2022, a meta-analysis led by Harvard epidemiologist Miguel Hernán found that the aggregate of pre-exposure prophylaxis trials with hydroxychloroquine suggested a reduction of around 28% in COVID-19 infections.[58] Evidence of effectiveness in this setting was also provided by a large multicenter study led by the Centre for Tropical Medicine and Global Health at the University of Oxford, published only in 2024, which found a 15% decrease in symptomatic infections with prophylaxis.[59] Both studies argued that the controversies surrounding the drug early in the pandemic led to the premature closure of studies and to difficulties in trial recruitment, ultimately hurting scientific enquiry about its effectiveness.
So apparently Harvard and Oxford researchers stand with RFK on HCQ, while obscure Indian journals and Wikipedia editors stand on the other side.
Would need to compare with net effects of lockdowns etc, but lockdowns I think were almost tautologically net-negative given the relationship between life expectancy and GDP across the world.
Throughout the book, RFK makes claims similar to this:
Kirsch’s study which found that the vaccines kill more people than they save in every age range was consistent with Pfizer’s sixmonth clinical trial finding that people who took the vaccine were more likely to die than people who didn’t take the vaccine
The fact-check of this claim by AP (https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-964291665925) contains a funny quote:
In fact, the tweet’s assertion that the Pfizer study aimed to measure efficacy against death is also wrong, Cennimo said. Rather, the study was designed to look at how effective the vaccine is at protecting against symptomatic illness.
The operation was a success, but the patient died, I guess. In reality though, impossible to judge without going into the details, endpoints and cohorts of the trial.
He argues that this cartel secretly funded doctors to produce fraudulent studies showing that the drugs were ineffective against COVID
Big Pharma incentives routinely affect the outcomes of studies (google it if in doubt), so it is plausible if either of the drugs is indeed effective as the Oxford/Harvard researchers claim wrt HCQ.
and that it did so in order to orchestrate global lockdowns
This implies lockdowns had been planned, which I don't believe and I haven't seen RFK make that claim in the book. But it's 800 pages, so it's possible.
@skibidist https://x.com/RichardHanania/status/1858264484688896147
Take a skim of this tweet, or at least the last two paragraphs in the image.
The idea that RFK jr is not anti vaccine in general is so stupid, I've seen such solid stuff in the past. This and my previous message are just stuff I came across that made me think of this thread. People like you that will say or do anything to carry water for populist dipshits are so contemptible. You should reflect not only on being wrong about RFK, but what ways of thinking and engaging with politics and the world that would lead you to run so far in the opposite direction of reality.
@Tumbles In 2021 with 'resist' rhetoric it has to refer to covid vaccines specifically (if it doesn't, I will change my mind and apologize). As I remember it, at the time, it was difficult to have a conversation with a stranger without them bringing up the vaccine.
He is not telling old people not to take it. Just children. Thinking it's wrong to not vaccinate children against COVID shows inability to engage with scientific literature and numbers therein. It's turned out OK for countries that did it, but there was genuine risk in doing it back then.
While I reflect on my contemptibility (as well as my deplorability, garbageness and general hitlerity), you can reflect on why yet another quote on covid is used to allege he is anti-vaccine in general.
If there are any markets on negative or positive health outcomes due to RFK being the head of HHS, let's just bet there. It's the one reliable method of revealing who is better grounded to reality.
It's not just covid! It's never been just covid with him! In 2021 had parents been gaslit for years about giving babies vaccines? This screenshot is just a highlight from the above screenshot.
I will reiterate that my opinion of RFK is not based on quote sniping. These quotes and my characterization of him reflect how I've heard him speak about vaccines when given a chance to expand on his views.
@Tumbles I looked up the podcast (https://sites.libsyn.com/311600/rfk-jr) and paid $1.20 (!) to get it transcribed. One can find more damning quotes in there. Most of the podcast is about covid except this fragment. So yes, I was wrong on that. He has expressed some unhinged views about vaccines in general.
And yet it seems to change nothing in my holistic assessment of what he is likely to do as the secretary. I don't believe for a moment he will cause an increase in infectious disease. If anything, any vaccination schedule published during his tenure will be seen as endorsed by him, increasing trust in the system among his followers.