24 February 2023

New report paints a grim picture of Portland's future.  Things have gotten so bad that Heathman Hotel had to sell.  The Commonwealth Building downtown defaulted on its mortgage.

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Portland City Council voted down having a watchdog position to enforce transparency.  No surprise.

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The government wants to ban off-label use of approved drugs.  The aim is to target physicians who might prescribe ivermectin to treat COVID-19.  But the unintended consequence is that many physicians, especially oncologists, use drugs off-label, because they can't wait for FDA approval for many applications.  So many patients would be harmed if they couldn't get treated with a drug on an off-label indication.  This is just plain stupid, and politicians should keep their hands out of medical practice.

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Hybrid and electric cars use less or no gasoline, so revenue from the gasoline tax is decreasing.  What to do?  Now Washington state wants to tax cars based on mileage.  This will be an invasion of privacy if they attach GPS units to cars.  Not to mention the extra expense which the taxpayer will ultimately bear.  Speaking of taxes, Washington wants to override the 1% property tax currently in place, and triple the tax to 3%. 

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You can take the person out of India, but I guess you can't take India out of the person.  Expatriates who are Dalit class, still find discrimination in Seattle.  We've seen this before.  As more immigrants come to the USA, eventually they bring to America all the problems of their homeland with them.  Assimilation into American culture takes time. 

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Stanford professors are finding that anonymous reporting of woke "transgressions" threatens free speech.  The East Germans learned this a long time ago.  I've spoken to some at a local large educational institution, who feel that similar policies have changed the nature of their interaction with students and other younger faculty, whom they feel are more likely to register offense.  It's just not worth the trouble.
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Fraud in medical research is increasing.  People in the know have been aware of this for a long time, and there are no easy solutions to this.  Having some level of healthy skepticism is appropriate, as well as being ready to change recommendations and opinion as new data become available.

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The Biden adminstration has discussed banning non-compete agreements for physicians.  Since about 90% of physicians in the U.S. are bound by non-compete clauses, this would likely shake up the employment landscape considerably.  Many young physicians, eager for to get a job somewhere, often take a position in a locale, with a medical group, so that they can start earning money.  Only after they are there and have practiced for a while, can they really determine if they've made the best choice.  And sometimes opportunities for employment elsewhere only arise later on.  Non-competes restrict employment mobility, and force a physician to stick with a less desirable job, and the physician is forced to leave town if the current job is unacceptable.  Techies in Silicon Valley often advance from company to company, as their talents and services are valued.  This opportunity is denied to the physician.  Although I can understand how this must be to a private medical group who wants a stable workforce, physicians should be allowed to go where they are wanted.  Naturally, opposing forces such as hospitals, are against this mobility and freedom.  They would like to maintain control over their employed doctors, but forcing unhappy doctors to uproot and leave town contributes to physician burnout.  We should not be treating our doctors this way.

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23 February 2023

The city of Portland continues to deteriorate.  The Commonwealth Building downtown nears foreclosure as occupancy is down to around 52%.  City parks will be darker as decrepit light fixtures are removed.  Replacement is uncertain - they'll have to find funding. 

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Two Portland Walmarts are shuttering, leading to a loss of about 580 jobs.  When you can't even keep Walmart happy...

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Why are lawmakers in Salem in a tizzy over the coronavirus?  In 2023? Didn't they all get vaxxed?

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Measure 110 should never have been passed.  But whenever you put drug legalization on the ballot, you can be sure that Oregonians will vote yes.  Now Linn County is suffering for it.  And there goes $300 million of marijuana tax money - down the drain.

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"We have made science fiction come true".  It may not really be a time machine, but if it can make me younger, I'll take it.

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The recent snowy weather has turned I-5 into a truck parking lot. What a nightmare.


Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford is sponsoring a bill to allow physicians to own hospitals.  Physicians were barred from owning hospitals in the ACA.  While some might think that physicians would just get rich from self-referrals, in actuality, it could be worked so that people still had choice.  But one major benefit is that it would allow physicians to have a better stake in healthcare.  At present, physicians are relegated to being employees, always working for someone else, and always being beholden to rules set by some private equity group or religious denomination.  Allowing a physician to direct how healthcare should be run, would be a game changer in improving healthcare.  Good on Sen. Lankford to support it.  This might decrease some of the burnout and healthcare shortages that people are reporting.

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22 February 2023

I saw this cartoon in a subreddit recently:

It is rather accurate as to the approach taken by the Left as a reaction to gun violence incidents.  The commenter could only state that empirically gun control seems to work in other countries, and so this cartoon doesn't matter.  Sure, I'd bet there's less gun violence in other counties because they 1) enforce the law and prosecute criminals; 2) their governments limit freedom a lot more in order to achieve order; 3) their culture is more respectful and the people there have "internal controls" where they behave themselves.  In America, we are seeing criminals released without bail, prosecutors drop charges, and we have a culture where people see that chaos and disorder is tolerated, so what the heck, right?  The cartoon only focuses on how inappropriate the thinking is to ban teeth.  The proper approach would be to eliminate the wolf. 

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Is this hiccup cure effective? Will have to try it next time.

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This article is circulating, supposedly showing that ivermectin has again been shown to be ineffective against SARS-CoV2 infection.  Why don't studies use the dosing schedule that has been shown to work?  Higher doses of IVM seem to just cause gastrointestinal upset.  The best dosing schedule seems to be "low and slow".  Like in this paper.  A prolonged administration of lower-dose IVM resulted in a 92% mortality rate reduction. 
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Marjorie Taylor-Greene thinks it's time for a national divorce.  Well, that probably won't happen nationally, but the Greater Idaho movement has advanced another notch.  It seems unlikely, but as someone said, if it passes, Eastern Oregon gets to be governed by non-woke leaders, Salem doesn't have to worry about conservatives causing procedural headaches, and what does Congress have to object to the deal? 

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People with higher cognitive ability favor freedom of speech over political correctness.  I agree totally.

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Could this be Zero-point Energy? 
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21 February 2023

I saw this interesting posting on Denis Pushkarev, who did a lot of beneficial open-source work.  But he got no financial benefit or goodwill for all of his sacrifice.  In fact he got hatred and rejection.  Lesson to be learned.

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Mises.org has an article about eliminating Social Security and Medicare, one of the third rails of American politics.  I am reminded of a video (now taken down) of a libertarian debating a Democrat.  In that video, th  e Democrat says that his brilliant idea is to convince other Dems to endeavor to pass huge socialist programs, knowing that once those programs are in place, it will be nearly impossible to reverse.  This has been true of Social Security, Medicare, and Obamacare.  As messy and financially unstable as they are, so much has been forcibly invested that reversing it would be painful and because of the lack of adequate money to do it fairly, would cause many financial harm.  It's like a graveyard - once you dedicate land for it, it's exceedingly difficult to take the land back.  You'd have to dig up graves, which would upset relatives, and would be very expensive to achieve.  But we're stuck with these socialist policies, and just because conservatives are not proposing their elimination doesn't mean they support socialism.

It's interesting how liberal fact-check sites debunk "myths" relating to SS.  They claim that there never was a SS Trust, and so it's silly to say that government is draining funds for SS by combining with the general funds for Congress to spend.  Yet they admit that in 1969 (under Democrat Pres. Johnson) that the SS Trust Fund was made to be included in the unified budget, which now can be spent.  To me, that's the same thing.  Also, blame is put on Ronald Reagan to make SS income taxable.  Reagan just commission the Greenspan Committee to look into addressing the SS money shortfall.  A bill to make SS income taxable was supported by Biden, and to break the 50-50 tie in the Senate, the tie-breaker was Al Gore, a Democrats.  Yes, Nixon was responsible for creating Social Security Income, but I bet he never dreamed that it would be made open to illegal immigrants, as well.  SS is even open to legal immigrants, who have not had to pay into the system.  It's been shown that these immigrants get a better deal than regular Americans who have had to have deductions taken from their paychecks for as long as they've worked.  Legal immigrants can just get the benefits. 

So these programs, unfair and fraught with threats to insolvency, are almost impossible to reverse.  Like so much in life: Easy to give - hard to take away. 

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20 February 2023

There's a saying: "If you think healthcare is expensive, just wait 'til it's free."  This is so true, but it is what many in Salem are proposing. I am certain that this will decrease the quality of care provided, and will result in even higher taxes.

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How often have we heard that a proposed tax is just a small amount, and certainly wealthy people can afford this itty bitty tax.  Well these itty bittys add up, and people are noticing this.  Portland's overall effective income tax burden is second only to NYC's.  And what are we getting for it?
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Oregon is proposing that cops need to complete at least 2 years of college education for the job.  A bachelor's degree if there are at least 50 cops in your department.  I imagine that some people pursue this job because it currently only requires a HS diploma.  Some suspect that it will deprive certain minority groups from this line of work.  But maybe if potential cops have a college degree, they'd pursue something else besides law enforcement.  Unclear how this will shake out.

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I am surprised that this rule, which became active in January, is catching employers off-guard.  They've had plenty of time to deal with it.  Guess, they figured Biden would take care of it, which he didn't.  Businesses will have to offer their employees a document that lists the true cost of medical services, prescription drugs, etc. so that patients can compare plans.  If they can't they pay a fine, or are forced to switch to an insurance carrier that provides transparency.

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Scientists who use Microsoft Excel to work with genomic data are seeing unexpected errors due to inappropriate autocorrect.  It's important to use the proper tools for the task, I guess.

19 February 2023

There is no longer any reason why healthcare providers need to be required to be vaccinated.  The vaccine doesn't protect against spread of the coronavirus and it is ineffective against the dominant Omicron strains, present in Oregon.  Boosters put you at risk of complications, such as myocarditis.  And the more boosters you get, the more you're at risk of getting an Omicron variant.  It's no wonder that we have a healthcare personnel shortage.

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In Honolulu, Waikiki Beach is beset by homeless tents, just like downtown Portland.  But instead of sweeping them away, Honolulu's leader close the beach.  Real smart.

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It will be interesting to see what the Supreme Court has to say about Section 230 protection, and how they will rule in these two cases.  Some people will decry that free speech is lost (as if it weren't already), but maybe we'll see more responsible internet content.  People can still create their own blogs.  But I look forward to the day when stupid speech dies in obscurity like before, rather than appearing in the evening news.

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Will Idaho make the administration of mRNA vaccines a criminal offense?
One thing about watching this video is how poorly informed they seem to be about getting into the details about what they may legislate.  Just a few brief and banal questions, "I heard that..." or "I thought that..." and the bill gets introduces.  Don't get me wrong - I think they are on the right track.  But is this how legislation begins?  Scary. 

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17 February 2023

The NY Fed is puzzled as to why young borrowers struggle to pay their credit card and auto loans.  I agree with the author - the only thing that's puzzling is that the Fed is puzzled. 
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Yes it is indeed good to have f*ck you money.  It allowed me to leave the Daimyo.  To maintain my own integrity.  Just enough, and not too much.

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As feared, the street drug Tranq (fentanyl mixed with xylazine) has arrived in the PNW, showing up in Seattle.  Won't be long before it arrives in Portland, though I wouldn't be surprised if it were already here.  Look for people's limbs to start festering and rotting open. 

16 February 2023

The Oregon legislature is considering a bill that would ban therapists from trying to change a person's sexual orientation.  The sponsor of the bill is gay, and doesn't want therapists to discuss this issue.  I really think government should stay out of the medical profession when it comes to determining what a doctor should say or recommend.  It's a slippery slope to regulating a physician's ability to speak objectively in other matters. 

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People don't trust the CDC anymore, and this is why.  When asked about vaccine-related myocarditis, CDC director Rochelle Walensky stated "We have not seen a signal, and we’ve actually looked intentionally for the signal in the over 200 million doses we’ve given."   Thanks to the release of a tranche of emails from an FOIA, we can see that the CDC was darned well aware of myocarditis.  What a liar!
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Interesting post about Google.  Has the giant corporation lost its mojo?  Looks like the search company is at a crossroads, where AI threatens its business model, and they haven't yet formulated how they will make as much money once this new technology takes hold.  Plus, all the employees' tasks and mission are so fragmented and siloed.  It's a "peacetime" company, apparently with no sense of urgency or cohesion.  (Kinda like the U.S. now, where we're losing our collective identity.)  Is Google's search quality as good as before?  Some think it peaked around 2016. 

15 February 2023

According to the Oregon Statewide Strategic Plan report, the substance abuse problem in Oregon consumes a whopping 17% of the state budget.  Yet the state legalizes harmful addicting drugs with Measure 110, and laments that the problem is expensive and consumes resources.  What idiots.
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Thomas Sowell once said:

"Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good. In area after area – crime, education, housing, race relations – the situation has gotten worse after the bright new theories were put into operation. The amazing thing is that this history of failure and disaster has neither discouraged the social engineers nor discredited them."

To this list, we should add the threat of single-payer healthcare.  A single-payer system, like ranked-choice voting, sounds like a good thing, but since money controls much in medicine, it basically makes the physician subservient to whatever some third-party decides is best.  Most people can't see this, and only predict that things will be less expensive.  Making care less expensive will come at a cost, but limiting your choices.  Fast food is cheaper, but it is not a dietary option for everyday eating.  It's been said that in healthcare, the three goals are quality, affordability, and accessibility.  But you can only choose two.  While this may be a simplification, it is not far from the reality.  Single-payer plans offer the affordability and accessibility, but quality requires that you have quality physicians, and the availability to receive care that is sometimes expensive.  It also means that you don't want to get bogged down with paperwork and administrative hassles that so often accompanies government-sponsored services.  But the most telling reason for wanting to avoid government-regulated single-payer care was revealed by SCOTUS when they ruled in favor of the vaccine mandate for healthcare providers, saying:

The court said that the vaccine mandate for health care workers was, unlike the OSHA regulation, justified as just the kind of detailed regulations that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has long imposed as a condition for health care providers getting federal funds.

Well, people over 65 have to take Medicare, and most physicians can not avoid taking older patients.  So by the nature of the insurance coverage, the government felt it had a right to determine how a doctor should be vaccinated.  Private insurance companies have no such ridiculous power.

Rather than pursue single-payer health, we should allow healthcare systems to compete with each other, and use market forces to lower costs and increase accessibility.  Allow interstate competition, for example.  Make it so that people can own their own policies, rather than have it be tied to employment.  Make prices for care more transparent.  Why isn't anyone working on this?  Magical thinking indeed.

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And here's a cynical article about those that go to Harvard Law School.
How do we go from a world where helping people is cliché to a world where swaths of lawyers are fighting to defend those doing just the opposite? The people who write that they want to help people too much on their applications are the same people three years later working for firms actively fighting for those who have hurt people.
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Here's an interesting article, which I can vouch for.  Beware of judging those who seem standoffish - they may be just trying to protect themselves against the pain of anxiety and social interaction.
 
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