Medical Care at VA Hospital in Durham, NC

Are we spending enough on the military?

Defense Department budget up 10%. Paid by other departments

Early word on the upcoming Trump federal budget is that Defense spending will increase by 10%, $54 billion. The money will come by cutting other departments. Supposedly Medicare and Social Security will not be touched. Taxes will be cut.

I find it quite odd that a military that has not won a war in 70+ years will have a budget increase. It's also interesting that Trump said,  “We spent $6 trillion in the Middle East, and we have potholes all over our highways and our roads.”  Where has the military been spending most of its money?

Replacing Medicare

Is every election rigged?

It seems to be in Trump's eyes if the winner does not cowtow to Trump.That's what he has to say about the election for the Democratic National Chairman. Here's his tweet:

The race for DNC Chairman was, of course, totally "rigged." Bernie's guy, like Bernie himself, never had a chance. Clinton demanded Perez! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 26, 2017

Economic Growth

The federal budget is normally based on forecasts of economic growth by the Council of Economic Advisers. The Trump team has supposedly ordered the Council to predict economic growth of 3 to 3.5 percent. 

Is this a good estimate? Inflation-adjusted economic growth over the past decade has been under 2 percent. And independent projections for the coming decade are equally lackluster, thanks in part to population aging. The Federal Reserve, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and private forecasters predict about 1.8 to 1.9 percent annual growth.

Major Danny Sjursen agrees with Bacevich

In a wonderful article in The Nation Sjursen asks us to recognize reality. Our attempt to bring democracy to the Middle East has been a failure. We have done battle in six Middle East countries and come up essentially empty handed. 

He asks "Has it worked? Is anybody, including Americans, safer? Few in power even bother to ask such questions. But the data is there. The Department of State counted just 348 terrorist attacks worldwide in 2001 compared with 11,774 attacks in 2015. That’s right: At best, America’s 15-year “war on terror” failed to significantly reduce international terrorism; at worst, its actions helped make matters 30 times worse."

He concludes: "First, false lessons and misbegotten collective assumptions contributed to and created much of today’s regional mess. As a result, it’s long past time to reassess recent history and challenge long-held suppositions. Second, policymakers badly overestimated the efficacy of American power, especially via the military, to shape foreign peoples and cultures to their desires. In all of this, the agency of locals and the inherent contingency of events were conveniently swept aside."

Consulting to Drug Companies

One of the leading consulting firms in this field is Precision Health Economics.  Its employees include leading economists and health care experts at the nation’s top universities. The company is doing quite well because it focuses on consulting for companies with very high priced drugs.

Among its clients are three leading makers of new hepatitis C treatments (which can cost as much as $1,000 per day): Gilead, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and AbbVie. When AbbVie funded a special issue of the American Journal of Managed Care on hepatitis C research, current or former associates of Precision Health Economics wrote half of the issue. A Stanford professor who had previously consulted for the firm served as guest editor-in-chief.

Precision Health Economics allows drug makers to review articles by its academics prior to publication in academic journals. Such prior review is controversial in higher education because it can be seen as impinging on academic freedom.

An Atypical Candidate for Governor

And, of course, he's from Arizona. You just have to go to a section of Noah Dyer's web site called 'Scandals and Controversy'. Supposedly, he's doing this because he believes in transparency. He considers five areas - sex, religion, personal finances, family and privacy. His revelations about his sex life and finances are things just about any candidate for any office would not willingly reveal. 

But, maybe that's a good thing. The rest of his web site is also somewhat atypical. He actually clearly states his position on several important issues. Is he too odd for the Arizona voter?

Do you agree?

Andrew Bacevich inveighs against the idea, according to David Brooks and others,  that "America is the grateful inheritor of other people's gifts. It has a spiritual connection to all people in all places, but also an exceptional role. America culminates history. It advances a way of life and a democratic model that will provide people everywhere with dignity. The things Americans do are not for themselves only, but for all mankind."

He spells out some of the results of this viewpoint: 

Here in any event is a brief inventory of what that euphemism conceals: thousands of Americans needlessly killed; tens of thousands grievously wounded in body or spirit; trillions of dollars wasted; millions of Iraqis dead, injured, or displaced; this nation's moral standing compromised by its resort to torture, kidnapping, assassination, and other perversions; a region thrown into chaos and threatened by radical terrorist entities like the Islamic State that US military actions helped foster. And now, if only as an oblique second-order bonus, we have Donald Trump's elevation to the presidency to boot.

What's wrong with Arizona?

Now its Senate has passed a bill that allows police to seize assets of anyone who attended a peaceful protest that happened to turn violent, and it also gives cops the power to arrest people who planned the events, even if they did not personally commit violence.

More planets like earth

NASA has announced that it has found seven potentially Earth-like planets orbiting a star 40 light-years away. The system is called Trappst-1. “It’s the first time that so many planets of this kind are found around a same star,” Michaël Gillon, the lead author of the Nature paper announcing the discovery, said in a press conference. “The seven planets … could have some liquid water and maybe life on the surface.”

But it’s a solar system very different from our own. For instance, Trappist-1 is a tiny, “ultra-cool” dwarf star. It’s cool because it’s small: just about a tenth of the mass of our sun and about one-thousandth as bright. But its low mass allows its planets to orbit it very closely and remain in the habitat.

The Three Musketeers to the Rescue

This time the eagles are fighting drones. The French Air Force is looking for a way to combat drones and has decided that eagles might be able to do the job. So,four eggs "were placed before birth on top of drones while still inside the eggshell and, after hatching, kept them there during their early feeding period," They named the birds d'Artagnan, Athos, Porthos and Aramis. As you'll see in the video, the birds slam into a drone, then dive with the wreckage into the tall grass.

How much freedom will Gen. McMaster have?

It looks as though most people think Trump's naming General McMaster to head the National Security Council was a very good move. McMaster has not been silent in his career; he has written several articles critical of the conduct of our wars. His most well-known is “Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Lies That Led to Vietnam.” The book's main point argued that the Vietnam War happened, in part, because military leaders failed to stand up to President Lyndon B. Johnson’s war plans, which they privately considered doomed, out of a desire to remain in the president’s favor and protect their careers. He also argues that Johnson and company were not overly interested in knowing the facts; little attention was paid to the advice of the military. It also portrays Johnson and his inner circle as more interested in hearing affirmation than hard truth, and in avoiding public criticism than defeat.

How will Trump act?

Very tiny frogs

From the BBC

Only 13 years to go

Does immigration lead to more crime?

Some research findings:

• The most striking finding from our research is that for murder, robbery, burglary and larceny, as immigration increased, crime decreased, on average, in American metropolitan areas. The only crime that immigration had no impact on was aggravated assault. These associations are strong and stable evidence that immigration does not cause crime to increase in U.S. metropolitan areas, and may even help reduce it.
• 
  
• There are a number of ideas among scholars that explain why more immigration leads to less crime. The most common explanation is that immigration reduces levels of crime by revitalizing urban neighborhoods, creating vibrant communities and generating economic growth.
• 
  
• We found that cities with historically high immigration levels are especially likely to enjoy reduced crime rates as a result of their immigrant populations.

Public vs. Private

Bert Spector, an associate professor at Northeastern University, has an interesting comparison of the obligations of leadership in a public and a private company. The SEC imposes an obligation of transparency on public corporations that does not apply to private businesses. Thus, public companies must make  full and public disclosures of their financial positions. Annual 10-K reports, quarterly 10-Q’s and occasional special 8-K’s require disclosure of operating expenses, significant partnerships, liabilities, strategies, risks and plans. These documents must be audited by an independent firm overseen by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. Furthermore, the CEO, along with the chief financial officer, is criminally liable for falsification or manipulation of the company’s reports. Private companies do not have such obligations. The CEO of a private business is not accountable to anyone. He can run the business as he wishes.

As we all know, some companies, whether private or public, are run very well; some are not. But, shouldn't we as citizens be informed as to our government's conduct and that of our employees?

Would you rather have Rex Tillerson, former CEO of Exxon Mobil, or Donald Trump - former owner, chairman and president of the Trump Organization, a family-owned limited liability company (LLC) that has owned and run hundreds of businesses involving real estate, hotels, golf courses, private jet rentals, beauty pageants and even bottled water -run the government?

One man's view of Putin

Grow your own food

Can you remember a worse start to a presidency?

I can't. And it's not because I disagree with most of what Trump has proposed in the past twenty-six days. For someone with no government experience (and apparently little real significant management experience) to issue fiats without testing them beforehand with at least one or two people with substantive government experience says a lot about his management skills. His time management skills are also shaky. How can he waste time complaining about companies dropping his daughter's line of merchandise? For someone whose finger is on a nuclear bomb to conduct a review of an enemy's actions in public boggles the mind.

I wonder how those who voted for him feel now.

Oh, to be a cop in Boston

The city's highest paid employee, a police officer, made $403,000 last year - $58,600 in overtime, $121,900 for police detail work, and a one-time retroactive check for $92,500 that he received last year after an arbitrator ordered the city to give detectives a hefty pay raise over a six-year period. His regular pay was about $92,500. His boss made $245,300, the mayor $175,000. Twenty-two other policemen made over $300,000. More than 500 detectives made between $200,000 and $300,000. Almost all of the top 100 earners for the city were policemen.

Salmon crossing the road in Vancouver

From a fellow Duncaster resident

Letting the public in on a President's discussion of North Korea

North Korea tested a missile Saturday. Trump and his aides discussed the issue near the dining room at Mar-a-Lago. A guest at the resort took photos of the meeting and published them on Facebook. The photos included the paperwork that was probably being discussed.

Oliver is back

A conservative speaks

Times have changed

Advice on the Drug Wars

Cesar Gaviria, President of Colombia from 1990 to 1994, has some advice for Rodrigo Duterte, President of the Phillipines:

"Throwing more soldiers and police at the drug users is not just a waste of money but also can actually make the problem worse."

"Locking up nonviolent offenders and drug users almost always backfires, instead strengthening organized crime."

"Not only did we fail to eradicate drug production, trafficking and consumption in Colombia, but we also pushed drugs and crime into neighboring countries."

"Tens of thousands of people were slaughtered in our anti-drug crusade."

"Many of our brightest politicians, judges, police officers and journalists were assassinated. At the same time, the vast funds earned by drug cartels were spent to corrupt our executive, judicial and legislative branches of government."

"They started making positive impact only when they treated drug use a social problem and not a military one."

"Real reductions in drug supply and demand will come through improving public health and safety, strengthening anticorruption measures — especially those that combat money laundering — and investing in sustainable development."

Many of these points could apply to us.

A visitor

‘‘Whenever it moved, it gave me a burning sensation in my eyes’’, said a woman in India. She had to go to four hospitals before she found out what "it" was.

It was a live cockroach sitting in the skull base, between the eyes and close to the brain. It took 45 minutes to get it out. It was still alive.

An ice shelf is cracking

An ice shelf, which develops from runoff from glaciers, provide structural support to the glaciers that rest on land. If a shelf collapses, the glaciers behind it can accelerate toward the ocean. Scientists are reporting that a major ice shelf (the fourth largest) in the Antarctic (called Larsen C) has grown 17 miles since December. The crack in Larsen C now reaches over 100 miles in length, and some parts of it are as wide as two miles. The tip of the rift is currently only about 20 miles from reaching the other end of the ice shelf. Once the crack reaches all the way across the ice shelf, the break will create one of the largest icebergs ever recorded.

Killing the EPA - and us

Bankruptcies turning the corner

Bankruptcies have been on the decline since 2010. However, December 2016 and January 2017 show increases. Consumers bankruptcies rose 5.4% year-over-year in January, commercial by 4.5%. US bankruptcy filings by consumers rose 5.4% in January, compared to January last year. This has not happened since 2010. 

Better than 2016?