Category Archives: Uncategorized

Leading from behind, the US is the last to stop flights.

Would you take a flight on one of these planes

Medicynical note: I think I’d wait, or take another flight. They have created a monster problem for themselves

Last year Trump cut taxes to the 1% (himself included) and corporations (those “citizens” in Citizens United) and now claims there is a terrible funding deficit. So he is now proposing severe cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, scientific, cancer research and other domestic programs.

You get the idea.

Medicynical note: his tax cuts were supposed to fire up the economy and increase tax revenues to the point that they cut the deficit. THEY DIDN’T

And the wall that he promised that Mexico was going to pay for. THEY DIDN’T.

He brings new meaning to running the government like a business. He’s failed numerous times and gone bankrupt six times.

A total disaster

“Candidate Trump campaigned on wiping out the yearly federal deficit, the governments $19 trillion in total debt and reducing the trade deficit. Reality is harsher than campaigning, especially when President Trump signed a huge corporate tax cut (which contained a minor cut for individuals). This has led to the federal deficit on track to reach $1 trillion per year.”

“Trump has talked loudly but delivered little real results when it comes to impacting trade. Under his watch the trade deficit has grown over $100 billion, going from $502 billion in 2016 to $621 billion in 2018, an increase of 19%. The deficit for Goods has increased $140 billion from $751 billion to $891 billion. At its current pace, the Goods deficit could also hit $1 trillion in 2020“

Medicynical note: He’s bankrupted six of his businesses, why change now.

Money corrupts every level of government.

“The answers became a bit clearer on Thursday as the judge, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., and a colleague, Michael T. Conahan, appeared in federal court in Scranton, Pa., to plead guilty to wire fraud and income tax fraud for taking more than $2.6 million in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers run by PA Child Care and a sister company, Western PA Child Care.”

Medicynical note: a little like campaign contributions whose purpose is to gain access and influence on a congressperson’s vote. Come to think about it, it’s a lot like that!

“‘Bad for Everyone’

“Led by Secretary Betsy DeVos, the Education Department has reversed an Obama-era crackdown on troubled vocational and career schools and allowed new and less experienced entrants into the field.”

And

“Ms. DeVos, who invested in companies with ties to for-profit collegesbefore taking office, has made it an agency priority to unfetter for-profit schools by eliminating restrictions on them. She also allowed several for-profit schools to evade even those loosened rules by converting to nonprofits.”

Medicynical note: It’s a crap game for students. They assume that schools mean educational opportunity, when in reality to the school the student simply represents revenue. The first priority of these schools is anything but education.

Our Shame

“The Trump administration has identified nearly 500 parents deported from the U.S. without their children, according to a recent court filing in a lawsuit related to family separations at the border. Many were not given the option to reunify with their children.”

Medicynical note: Some day when the Trump era reaches it’s well deserved end it will be known for this. These kids will rival Argentina’s disappeared and in 20 years there will be movies and exposes of the immorality of the United States in the Trump administration.

Nice going.

Here is a remarkable and yet entirely unremarkable story. The Commerce Department announced this morning that the country’s trade deficit last year was the biggest in US history. It’s $891 billion for merchandise, $621 billion when the service sector is added in, and $419 billion with China alone. Each is a record. The Post reports that the overall number tops the previous record of $838 billion in 2006, but it doesn’t seem like those numbers are adjusted for inflation or judged relative to the overall size of the economy. So possibly there should be an asterisk after biggest ever. (This Reuters article says biggest since 2008 when adjusted for inflation.) Still however you slice it, for all President Trump’s yakking and fairly disruptive trade wars, the problem has actually

Honor system and capitalism, really?

“The patent system is often explained as an exchange between inventors and the public. By filing for a patent, the inventor can get a period of exclusivity. In return, the public gets to see how the invention works. This is sometimes called the “patent bargain.” The Theranos story reveals that the system fails to live up to this ideal.”

“Early Theranos skeptics tended to be scientists who had heard the company’s extravagant claims and had asked the obvious question: does the tech really work? In 2014, a pathologist wrote that he was skeptical Theranos was using proprietary technology for many of its tests. Other scientists expressed frustration that Theranos had not shared its methods with the scientific community nor offered any evidence that the methods worked.”