When I was in high school and college in the 1970s, marijuana was (a) illegal and (b) plentiful. I may or may not have inhaled, but people I knew were certainly growing, drying, selling and buying dope at the time. From a public health standpoint, marijuana is more benign than alcohol and tobacco.I’m happy to see the cannabis industry taxed. Cannabis, while organic, isn’t exactly health food and certainly isn’t the staff of life. But from an economic standpoint, legalization is a win, win, win.“Companies that grow, manufacture, and sell their own cannabis products can fold more expenses into the “cost of goods sold,” the only allowable deduction under the current tax code. But they still often struggle, said Tracy LeMaire, co-founder of TAC CPAs, an

I seldom eat at chain restaurants, and I’ve never set foot in a Red Lobster. So the latest bankruptcy of Red Lobster doesn’t affect me personally, but it does serve as yet another illustration of pernicious consequences of vulture capitalism.When the private equity firm Golden Gate Capital bought Red Lobster, the chain was already beaten down by the COVID pandemic and rising operating costs. “Typically, when a private-equity firm takes over a company, it finances the acquisition by loading the company down with debt, which makes the deal cheaper for the PE firm but also makes it harder for the company to thrive. In Red Lobster’s case, though, the problems went beyond that. While Golden Gate Capital did add debt to Red Lobster’s balance sheet, it also

Some history: For the longest time Michigan districts were gerrymandered in favor of Republicans. Since the 1980s, Republicans had control of the Michigan Senate. On and off, Republicans had control of the House for 22 times. A trifecta in favor of Republicans was in place 14 times. It was not until voting districts were decided by Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission. made up of citizens were the districts competitive. For the first time in 2023, Democrats had control of the Governorship, the House and the Senate.

This story is about one Michigan Republican who voted to impeach trump. It is a long article and interesting. Hope you read it. Angry Bear is posting this for Joel.

~~~~~~~~

Inside the Michigan GOP’s MAGA Meltdown

by

Let’s be very clear: in vitro fertilization (IVF) results in far more zygotes than will ever be implanted. Further, pre-implantation testing means that some zygotes will be rejected. In the end, this means that millions of fertilized eggs will be discarded. That was always baked in the IVF cake.

For reasons that escape me as a PhD geneticist, some people believe that the cluster of cells that we call “zygotes” are the moral equivalent of a fully developed human being. For those folks, destroying zygotes is murder. In the Republican states that have declared that life begins at conception, IVF is ipso facto illegal. Which means that the “pro-life” right is anti-life.

Look, most human conceptions do not progress to live birth, which means that

My dissertation research was published in 1983 in a two-author paper in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. JBC is the house journal of the American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. After your referees and the editor approved, the manuscript was published with the payment of “page charges,” to cover the journal costs since it didn’t take advertising. JBC is a stolid publication; it has a reputation for rigor, if not excitement.In my 40+ years of science publication, I’ve usually had to pay page charges, and sometimes color plate charges. Fortunately, I’ve had the funding to pay when I needed to. And my most cited publication has been cited over 700 times, so visibility hasn’t been a problem for me as a scientist. But baked in the cake of

Here’s Jerome Adams, MD, former Surgeon General, now outraged at the absurdity that is the American “healthcare” system:“Numerous Americans have found themselves ensnared in analogous predicaments while seeking medical attention, as evidenced by the myriad stories shared in response to my tweet. The opacity surrounding healthcare pricing makes it difficult for patients to ascertain the cost of their care upfront, engendering bewilderment, frustration, and financial distress when confronted with unexpected bills. Although the No Surprises Act (NSA) was passed to address just this issue, its implementation (beginning in 2022) has been contentious and some hospitals are still not in compliance.“In my case, had I been aware that I would be charged $10,000

I was a graduate student in a STEM program when Reagan was elected and the Laffer curve was used to justify tax cuts. The problem that immediately stood out to me at the time was that neither the ordinate nor the abscissa in the Laffer graph had scales, so it was impossible to assess where, exactly, the inflection point occurred. Based on the symmetrical drawing, we’re meant to infer that a 50% tax rate is the point after which government revenue would fall, but Laffer wasn’t even willing to support that inference by showing the scale on the X axis!From the Wikipedia page on the Laffer curve:

” . . . however, the curve might not have only a single peak, nor must it peak symmetrically at whatever value maximizes tax revenue. . .”The Laffer

My wife drives a 21 year-old Pontiac Vibe (= Toyota Matrix). It could fail at any time, and the question of what she’ll replace it with is on our minds. EV or hybrid? I personally know some Tesla owners who are happy with their choice, but I remain concerned about range and charging stations. Thanks, Elon, for warning me off EVs!“The day before Elon Musk fired virtually all of Tesla’s electric-vehicle charging division last month, they had high hopes as charging chief Rebecca Tinucci went to meet with Musk about the network’s future, four former charging-network staffers told Reuters.“After Tinucci had cut between 15% and 20% of staffers two weeks earlier, part of much wider layoffs, they believed Musk would affirm plans for a massive charging-network

We are not the typical American car buyers. In 40 years, my wife and I have owned exactly five cars, two of which we still drive: one is 21 years old and just ticked over 100K miles, while the other is 10 years old and will soon hit 50K. But who knows how much longer the 21 year-old Pontiac Vibe will last? When it dies, we’ll consider an EV or hybrid. There are certainly a lot of Teslas on the road, and there are other EVs that are cheaper than Teslas. The future of EVs looks pretty bright. But apparently, the Chinese are leading the way. From a recent review:“I spent a week in China for the Beijing Auto Show, the country’s biggest car industry event. As a guest of the Geely Group along with a few other international journalists, I drove more than a

Since many AB readers are either retired or about to be:“Looking solely at the trust fund that covers retirement and survivor benefits, Social Security will only be able to afford scheduled payments in full until 2033, roughly the same projection as last year. At that time, the fund’s reserves will be depleted, and continuing income will only cover 79% of benefits owed.”*snip*“As for Medicare, its hospital insurance trust fund, known as Medicare Part A, has a few more years before it runs dry. But in 2036, Medicare will only be able to pay 89% of total scheduled Part A benefits, which also cover hospice care, short-term skilled nursing facility services and home health services following hospitalizations.”Don’t look for the current GOP Congress to act.

A comment on an AB thread recently reminded me that I needed to update my understanding of the economics of long-distance travel by plane vs car:“In 1970, flying was twice as energy intensive as driving, but that has reversed. In 2012, the most recent year counted, driving one person one mile took 4,211 BTUs, while flying required just 2,033.“The numbers for driving are based on the average fuel economy of all light-duty vehicles (that’s passenger cars, SUVs, pickups, and vans, which averaged 21.6 mpg), using data from the US DOT. Sivak counted only cars with internal combustions engines—no plug-in hybrids and EVs, which comprise less than 1 percent of the American fleet. The flight figures count major, large national, and large regional airlines,

And the grift goes on:“Jerry Dean McLain first bet on former president Donald Trump’s Truth Social two years ago, buying into the Trump company’s planned merger partner, Digital World Acquisition, at $90 a share. Over time, as the price changed, he kept buying, amassing hundreds of shares for $25,000 — pretty much his “whole nest egg,” he said.“McLain, the tree service owner in Oklahoma, said he believes the stock could “go to $1,000 a share, easy,” once the media stops writing so negatively about it and the company works through its growing pains. The company’s leaders, he said, are being “too silent right now” amid questions about the falling share price, but he suspects it’s because they’re working on something amazing and new.“McLain is an amateur

In many capitalist European countries, college students do not have to pay tuition fees out of their own pockets. Here in America, most students have to fund their own college costs, which for many students means student loans. Whether or not they complete the degree, student loan borrowers can’t discharge these loans through bankruptcy.Of course, college isn’t free in Europe, it’s paid for by taxpayers. Presumably, those countries believe the benefits of an educated citizenry repays the investment. I guess Americans don’t.But in Massachusetts, they’re taking a small step towards the European model. MassReconnect offers free community college to any student over the age of 25:“Less than a year after the Healey administration launched the program,

Decades ago, the artificial sweetener cyclamate was banned because it caused bladder cancer in rats. Later, it turned out that this was an artifact of (1) the tendency of cyclamate to form a precipitate with the male rat urinary globulin in the bladder, which leads to inflammation and promotes cancer, and (2) the fact that experiments were only done with male rats. Are cyclamates dangerous for humans? Who knows? The lesson here is not that we should ignore animal testing. The lesson is that we should be careful about extrapolating from animal testing.It has long been known that acrylamide, a neurotoxin and possible carcinogen, is generated by ordinary baking and frying. Studies in rat cells and whole rats implicate acrylamide in DNA damage of the sort

Look, Mike Johnson is a right-wing Christianist theocrat, but he did the right thing on Ukraine aid. I get it. This was partly a power play on his part to show that he, and not MTG, is in control of the House. And if the deal was that Democrats will vote against a motion to vacate in return, I’m OK with that transaction. Mike Johnson and the politics of compromise
Tags: Mike Johnson, the politics of compromise, Ukraine aide

When I was growing up in East Tennessee in the 1960s, there was a local grocery chain owner and right-wing politician named Cas Walker who railed about, among other things, water fluoridation. Water fluoridation was alleged to be a communist plot. If so, then God must be a communist, since water in some parts of the country is naturally fluoridated. In fact, that natural fluoridation, and its correlation with lower incidence of tooth decay, helped lead to the widespread use of artificial fluoridation.“The CDC maintains that community water fluoridation is not only safe and effective but also yields significant cost savings in dental treatment. Public health officials say removing fluoride could be particularly harmful to low-income families — for whom

Most students who attend medical school in the US do so with student loans. Yes, some have military scholarships and some have wealthy parents, but most don’t. I’m guessing that most students reckon they’ll easily pay off the loans with the income that an MD or DO degree commands, and so far, they’ll be right.But the immensity of these loans has negative externalities. Here are two:1. It affects the residency choices of graduates. Students with large loans (not just med school but college loans) are incented to choose highly compensated specialties like surgery, dermatology, cardiology and ophthalmology and not the less well-compensated fields of family medicine, pediatrics and geriatrics;2. It affects decisions about whether to promote academically

I’m an investor, not a gambler, so I don’t own cryptocurrency, NFTs or shares in “Truth” Social. So the news that investors in DJT are being taken to the cleaners doesn’t faze me. “Shares of Trump Media plunged more than 15% on Monday after the company filed to issue millions of additional shares of stock.“Trump Media’s dramatic slide came as Donald Trump sat in a Manhattan courtroom for the start of his criminal trial on hush money-related charges. Trump is the majority stakeholder in the company.“Trump Media, which created the Truth Social app and trades under the stock ticker DJT on the Nasdaq, fell nearly 20% last week.“Since the company began public trading on March 26, its share price has fallen more than 62%, from an opening price of $70.90

OK, Tesla isn’t Bitcoin and it isn’t Trump’s Pravda Social, but: “Tesla announced to Gigafactory Texas employees that it will shorten Cybertruck production shift amid rumors that it is preparing a round of layoffs.“We received several reports today from Tesla employees hearing rumors of an important round of layoffs happening this week at the company.“Some of them are talking about layoffs as high as 20% of the workforce, which would mean tens of thousands of employees.”Yes, Tesla actually makes something tangible, so it’s not just NFTs on wheels, but it’s hard to ignore the impression that some of the company valuation is linked to a cult of personality.Elon has not repealed the law of gravity
Tags: layoffs,

I’m seeing the usual hyperventilating about college tuition. Look, there’s a lot of competition, particularly among the more competitive universities, to post exorbitant sticker prices for tuition because it makes them look valuable. The reality is that college tuitions are steeply discounted and most domestic students get “scholarships” that reduce the actual cost. “ . . .the actual cost of college for a family with an income of $100,000 has increased 16% since 1995 and hasn’t increased at all since 2007. This doesn’t change until your income exceeds $150,000. All of this is adjusted for inflation.

“The Brookings data shows a higher increase for public universities, but that’s because they include room and board. If you look at tuition and fees,

My former chairman used to tell the story of when he was a resident on rounds in the 1950s, he would hear a pounding sound in some of the patient rooms. When he looked in to discover the source, it was a nurse pounding the back of a patient who was stretched across the bed with his/her head hanging over the edge. The nurse was trying to dislodge the mucus in the lungs of the patients, who had cystic fibrosis. While cystic fibrosis is a multisystem genetic disorder, the main life-threatening complication is pulmonary infections caused by a build-up of secretions in the lung.Enter Vertex, a Boston-based pharma company with a three-drug cocktail called Trikafta to treat cystic fibrosis. Trikafta works for about 90% of cystic fibrosis patients. Its

Obesity is a risk factor for cancer, heart disease stroke and diabetes. Thus, drugs like semaglutides (Wegovy, Ozempic) don’t just reduce weight in the obese, they also reduce risk of cancer, heart disease, stroke and diabetes, which are huge health care burdens. It’s good to see that Medicare is finally coming to grips with this obvious fact:“On March 8, 2024, FDA approved Wegovy (semaglutide) to treat cardiovascular disease risks — heart attack, stroke, and death — for obese or overweight adults with a history of cardiovascular disease, making it the first anti-obesity medication (AOM) to obtain such approval. Studies show that semaglutide reduces heart disease risks when accompanied by blood pressure and cholesterol management and healthy lifestyle

EVs are certainly proliferating, not only here in East Providence but all over the planet. However, Hertz’ retreat from the rental market demonstrates the challenges facing companies with large fleets of vehicles.Hertz cuts EV fleet by a thirdTrucking companies have a lot invested in their diesel engine-powered truck fleets, and of course, many trucks are owner-operated.Enter Remora. Named after fishes that hitch rides on whales, sharks, rays, turtles and small boats, Remora builds devices that mount on the back of a truck, attach to the tailpipe and capture carbon emissions while driving. The driver offloads captured and compressed CO2 while refueling and the CO2 can then be sold or sequestered underground.In this way, an existing fleet of diesel

In 2020, I was a subject in the Moderna phase III trial for their COVID mRNA vaccine. At the same time, Pfizer-BioNTec trialed a similar mRNA vaccine. Both mRNA vaccines proved highly successful. In both cases, chemically modified mRNA encoding the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein is injected, programming cells that receive the mRNA to produce and secrete spike protein until the mRNA decays.Now, a innovative self-amplifying mRNA vaccine has been approved in Japan has been developed that requires far less modified mRNA:“Self-amplifying mRNA vaccines contain a gene that encodes the spike protein as well as viral genes that code for replicase, the enzyme that serves as a photocopier. So one self-amplifying mRNA molecule can produce many more.”This

Kevin Drum has a timely post on grocery inflation. Overall, it’s at 1% now.“Why do so many people still think inflation is high? It’s because they don’t respond to averages. They respond to outliers.”*snip*“Frozen juice is up 27%. Baby food is up 9%. Ground beef is up 6%. When you shop for groceries, these things are going to stand out.“Now, it’s also true that eggs are down 17%. Apples are down 10%. Fruits, vegetables, chicken, and dozens of other items have been flat. But you don’t really notice that. You notice the occasional item that’s way higher than it used to be.”Frozen juice inflation is due to citrus greening disease in Florida and a poor Southeast Asian sugar crop. Egg prices are about to go up since 1.6 million hens have been culled because

There has always been a lot of misinformation and frank dishonesty surrounding Social Security. Here are three things that Social Security isn’t:1. A retirement investment. Social Security is insurance. It is not meant to be your sole source of income after retirement (although for many Americans, it basically is). Social Security is not a substitute for a pension or 401k, or for personal savings. But if some calamity befalls you and you lose your retirement savings, Social Security can keep you from having to starve under a bridge. Comparisons between Social Security and, e.g., index funds are specious.2. Broke or bankrupt. Even if the Trust Fund runs out in ca. 2033, Social Security will still pay nearly 80% of projected benefits. As long as there

When I was in college, I took up pipe smoking. I particularly enjoyed Turkish Latakia tobacco, smoked through a long-stemmed church warden clay pipe. But shortly after I got married, my wife told me to stop.Smoking is a particularly dangerous nicotine delivery system. Nowadays, there is vaping, which some see as safer. It may well be, but “safer” isn’t the same as “safe.”“People who self-reported ever having used electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) were 19% more likely to develop heart failure within 45 months than those who reportedly never did (adjusted HR 1.19, 95% CI 1.06-1.35). This was not affected by factors such as patient age, patient sex, and cigarette smoking . . .”Vaping and heart failureAlso too, smokeless tobacco is seen as a safe

I grew up in the American South as the end of apartheid. I remember the first Black kid who showed up in my 3rd grade and how the teacher prepared us for his arrival the day before. I remember the race riots of the ‘60s and I remember where I was when I learned MLK had been assassinated at the other end of the state.Yes, we’ve now had a two-term Black president (although his legitimacy was questioned by many, including the current GOP candidate for President), and segregated water fountains, lunch counters and public schools are a thing of the past. But racist anachronisms still prevailed in medicine, and their consequences are seldom remediated:“Jazmin Evans had been waiting for a new kidney for four years when her hospital revealed shocking news:

When I think of the places on the planet that seem optimized for solar and wind power generation, I think of deserts like the Sahara and the desert Southwest in the US. And yet Germany is generating a growing share of its electricity through these renewables:“Preliminary data by energy market research group AG Energiebilanzen (AGEB) showed that onshore wind turbines produced a record 114.2 terawatt hours (TWh) in Germany in 2023, while solar PV produced a record 61.1 TWh.”Germany is far from a desert in climate and geography, but it is still feeling the heat from climate change:“In January, the DWD had said that 2023 also marked Germany’s hottest year since records began in 1881, warning that the country had to “take intensive action to protect the

It’s hard to keep generating fresh content every day for your edification and entertainment here at Angry Bear. The temptation is to use Chat GPT to do the heavy lifting, but so far, we’ve foresworn AI to rely on our own in-house I. If you begin to suspect that we’ve betrayed our readers, here are the ten most overused words by ChatGPT*1. Explore2. Captivate3. Tapestry4. Leverage5. Embrace6. Resonate7. Dynamic8. Testament9. Delve10. ElevateWhen these start to appear regularly, you’ll know the bots have won.*h/t Kevin Drum over at jabberwocking.comTen overused words by ChatGPT
Tags: Artificial Intelligence, ChatGPT