Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Some legislators saw the dilemma

Slate has an article on AARP designed legislation in Georgia. Under the Georgia Fair Lending Act, however, players in the secondary mortgage market could face serious liability if they so much as touched a predatory loan. The AARP, which drafted the model legislation that formed the basis for the Georgia law, explained that imposing liability […]

PTSD for kindergarten kids

Pediatrics also included a short description of work done in the field on treatments for children age 4-7. Nothing earth shaking, but a reminder of who else gets scared in theater, wherever that occurs. Adler Center for Research in Child Development and Psychopathology, Department of Psychology, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, Israel OBJECTIVE. The goal […]

Dirty statistics

Hat tip to Healthy Rivers, my favorite site to follow dirty statistics, offers a new public health tracking program locally to shed light on a problem that has been mostly ignored to date. I had a close friend here in Milwaukee who got really sick this summer from swimming in the lake while sailing after […]

Shoot the dog first as a warning

The Guardian reports a letter signed by five notable military persons sent to their respective governments concerning preemptive nuclear attack. The risk of further [nuclear] proliferation is imminent and, with it, the danger that nuclear war fighting, albeit limited in scope, might become possible,” the authors argued in the 150-page blueprint for urgent reform of […]

A nation of savers and investors does what?

An Inconvenient Truth from John Bogle via Fool.com cautions investors. In my opinion the exuberance of playing even mutual funds, much less stocks, in the grand scheme of average investors is telling. I recently came across a chart that John Bogle, founder of the Vanguard Group, posted on his blog. This blog highlighted some startling […]

Pharma research versus ‘admin/marketing’ costs

A review of costs in the Pharmaceutical industry for comparison between research and ‘marketing and administration’ budgets was done for 2004. Posts on the issue have argued the point. A quick review of this source looked reasonable, but needs a more careful study. There are better minds to do this than I, but offer the […]

GAO report on the Great Lakes

The GAO reports on the inability to measure small amounts of toxins in the Great Lakes that can cause harm. The same is true, as described in other posts, for unborns and babies. Is this a worthy function of government to oversee, water and babies being crucial also to us? How would a free market […]

Some plain vanilla snark

Bruce Bartlet of The NYC gives us this perspective on rescue plans. The history of anti-recession efforts is that they are almost always initiated too late to do any good. This chart, based on recession timelines from the National Bureau of Economic Research, shows the enactment of stimulus plans is a fairly accurate indicator that […]

State of the Art for propranolol research

This article states state of the art research for propranolol for PTSD. At this point in the research, though, it’s too early to tell how well beta blockers might work even as a therapeutic aid, Altemus said. “There were two small studies that have already been done using propranolol for PTSD, where they treated people […]

Martin Luther King Day organization asks for action, not vacation and a three day weekend. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. sought to forge the common ground on which people from all walks of life could join together to address important community issues. On January 21st, 2008, millions of Americans across the country will once again […]