I see where Trump has tweeted on his Twitter knock-off Pravda Social that the number of foreign-made films imported to the US is a “national security threat.” He wants to use this as an excuse to impose a 100% tariff on foreign flicks. This elasticity in the definition of “national security” could be made to […]

When I started teaching medical students, our MD curriculum was four years. The entire first two years were pre-clinical. Students advanced to clinical clerkships at the beginning of their third year. For seven years, I was course director for a 2.5 trimester, 95 lecture course called “Medical Biochemistry.” When I retired last July, pre-clinical training […]

The “just in time” model is supposed to make supply chains more efficient by minimizing warehousing and storage. The current Trump tariffs are doing violence to the JIT model: “Trade experts say that companies have stockpiled enough inventory in recent months that, if the White House reverses course soon and significantly drops tariffs on China, […]

My brother Mike is a retired mechanical engineer. He emailed me this morning and reminded me of a New Yorker article we had both read years ago and pointed me to a fascinating youtube video that retells the story. In a nutshell, the Citicorp building in Manhattan was a triumph of architectural innovation in its […]

I’m on traditional Medicare and so is my wife. We’ve been happy with the coverage. We both elected not to get Medicare Advantage plans. Not only because we’d read about a higher rate of denial of care for MA plans, but because of the overcharging. If DOGE really wanted to go after a soft target, […]

Trump claims his tariffs will bring manufacturing jobs back to the US. But you can’t create manufacturing jobs if no one wants to buy what you make. How’s that going? “Euro zone consumers are happy to ditch U.S. products if they are hit by tariffs in the course of a tit-for-tat trade war with U.S. […]

“Behind closed doors, some Republicans are irked that their leaders are not doing enough explaining: One Republican with direct knowledge of the matter told POLITICO “there’s frustration for not laying out the rationale behind Medicaid cuts.” Not to worry. Here’s Duncan Black: “ . . . the rich want more money and they want you […]

Look, tariffs are just consumption taxes. American consumers pay for tariffs on Chinese goods, not the Chinese government, businesses or people. Trump pretends that exporting countries pay our tariffs. If he really believed that, he’d be happy to see Amazon post how much China is paying to get their goods into our market. But when […]

Apparently, MAGA means empty shelves and fewer jobs: “Trump’s tariffs on goods from China have disrupted trans-Pacific supply chains. U.S. officials are alarmed by companies’ dwindling inventories of critical raw-earth metals necessary for a range of economic activity; Beijing restricted the metals this month. In the three weeks since the tariffs took effect, ocean-container bookings […]

As usual, Trump is doing what he accuses others of. In this case, bleating about “waste, fraud and abuse” while removing all the safeguards against waste, fraud and abuse. “The Trump White House this month announced two new executive orders radically changing procurement procedures, especially defense procurement procedures, in ways that will unleash waste, fraud […]