Sorry, Hill.

She seems to be saying, "Sorry, Hillary!"

I find profound irony in Jill Stein's efforts to force a recount in key battleground states that went red in the last presidential election, particularly if you realize that votes that went to her were more than the margin of victory in both Wisconsin and Michigan.

If Jill Stein had simply made the announcement prior to the election that she was concerned about the possibility of a Trump presidency and that she was removing herself from consideration, and for her supporters to PLEASE hold their nose and vote for Clinton, Hillary would have won!

What was the point of her campaign? Did she intend to be a spoiler from the beginning? She wasn't even on the ballot in all 50 states. She certainly knew she had zero chance of winning the election.

Bernie Sanders could have easily done the same thing and run as a third party candidate, which would have tilted the outcome even further in favor of Trump, but he did not. He used the primary campaign as the vehicle for his platform, realizing that a third party run would split the Democratic vote.

Could Jill Stein really be so stupid to have not seen the possibility of this outcome? I find that hard to believe, which makes her disruptive actions all the more ironic.

Wait, I Won!

Some Predictions for Trump's First Term

Economy

Expect interest rates to rise and the dollar to fall, with inflation ticking up significantly by the mid-point of the first term. The U.S. will pressure China to stop selling the Yuan and allow it to float, which will mean that the Chinese will have to start selling the Treasury Notes that they have accumulated. Between a lower dollar and higher tariffs, prices for entire baskets of goods will increase. The stimulative effects of the lower dollar and higher import costs will not be instantaneous, and it will be rough sledding while U.S. manufacturing tries to gear back up. Meanwhile, the U.S. debt will explode, which will undermine confidence in the greenback, further pressuring the value of the dollar and driving interest rates even higher. The march back to a booming U.S. manufacturing sector could become quite a slog.

Geopolitics

Apart from some sort of grandiose show of force to crush ISIS (probably in cooperation with the Assad regime and the Russian military), I expect U.S. military spending to decline, not increase. U.S. support will tend to gravitate toward strong-arm leaders who can maintain regional order. The notion of the U.S. as 'global cop' is over with. Our allies should be ready to defend themselves, and we will gladly sell them the arms they need to do so. In other words, it will be a good time to be an authoritarian dictator, and concerns about violations of human rights will be largely ignored.

Infrastructure

Think bridges, bridges and more bridges. Plus, airports. Pretty much everything Trump said he would do infrastructure-wise he will attempt to do, and he'll find little resistance in Congress to his appropriation bills.

Education

Say goodbye to the Dept. of Education and to Common Core. Say hello to taxpayer-funded school vouchers for private and parochial school students. Charter schools will also see a rise, but I expect the expansion of the voucher program to be the biggest change.

Obamacare

I don't expect that we will go back to a situation where we have as many Americans without health insurance as we did under George W. Bush, but I do expect rates to start to reflect risk, which will mean higher rates and higher deductibles for those who are obese or with preexisting conditions. At the same time, I don't expect the federal subsidy to keep pace with these higher rates, so many families will be adversely affected and, ultimately, driven off the insurance rolls. Or, fixing Obamacare could prove too messy and we could simply go back to what we had before.

The Environment

In a word: toast. I expect huge swathes of U.S. coastal real estate to be under water regularly before the end of Trump's second term. Who is going to pay for all that damage? I don't anticipate any major federally-funded civil engineering projects to ward off the inevitable sea rise, even though the social and economics impacts will be huge. Or, you could just move to higher ground.

Immigration

Apart from efforts to better secure the border with Mexico, a major effort will be undertaken to identify and vet all undocumented aliens residing in the U.S., and those who do not pass muster will be deported along with their families, including minor children who may have been born in this country. Those who can be shown to have no criminal history and who are gainfully employed will be given a path to legal residency. Simultaneously, I expect the Trump Administration to dramatically increase the number of H1B visas, subject to extensive background checks, to provide labor to those industries (particularly agriculture) where labor is scarce. How successful these efforts will be overall is questionable, as their implementation will be fraught with hazards and legal challenges. On one hand, I would expect many families to voluntarily return to their countries as they have been doing in large numbers since 2008. On the other hand, the deportations will be expensive, heart-wrenching and disruptive to families and communities.

Doctor Death

Almost half a million dead --
Assad and Putin have much to celebrate.

The Syrian Civil War is on its way to half a million war dead, nearly twice the death rate of the rebellion put down by Assad's father 35 years ago. I always thought of Bashar al-Assad as a mild-manner, pro-western gentleman. At least, that was the image that he projected. It is clear to me now that he is a psychopathic sadist who has little regard for the people of his country. I'm sorry, but if my beloved country was in the throes of one of the worst humanitarian crises in modern times I would NOT be caught smiling for a photo op.

How did the world allow Syria to get to this point? Was there anything anyone could have done to prevent this level of bloodshed? I believe that there is, and I believe that Syria could be peaceful today if certain things had been done years ago.

Quite early in the conflict the Obama Administration drew a red line in the sand: if Assad were to use chemical weapons against its citizens he would face consequences. On the 21st of August of 2013 that line was crossed, when rockets with sarin gas landed on the rebel-occupied city of Ghouta, Syria to devastating effect.

Some of the almost 1,500 victim of the nerve gas attack.

Unfortunately, neither the U.S. nor NATO acted, which left a gap into which Russia has stepped, thereby insuring that the Assad regime will retain control of Syria and that the conflict will continue with no end in sight.

So, what could have changed this outcome? What needed to happen as early on as possible was for Assad to feel enough pressure to force a negotiated outcome, and there were a few things the U.S. and NATO could have easily done in response to the gas attack to put strong pressure on Assad:

• Bomb the airstrips to prevent aircraft from taking off and landing.
• Create a naval blockade to control the flow of weapons into Syria.
• Use drones to target and destroy missile batteries whenever they are used to launch missiles.
• Use superior U.S. air power to keep Syrian aircraft grounded.

These actions would have leveled the playing field and would, in my opinion, have quickly forced brokered negotiations that would have led to a transition government with international support.

Unfortunately, President Obama, while making it clear he did not need Congress in order to take military action and acknowledging that failing to act in response to the chemical weapons attack would make a mockery of Western resolve, deferred to Congress who debated a 60 day war authorization but ultimately failed to pass anything.

Now, instead of a peaceful outcome, the Syrians are faced with a war that could easily go on for 10 years or more, costing over a million lives, displacing over 15 million people, creating regional instability and providing opportunities for Islamist groups to gain strength, all the time promising little hope that the despotic authoritarian regime whose abuses led to the rebellion will ever be deposed.

Nice work, World.

Post 9/11 Lessons We Can Learn

Fifteen years after the 9/11 attacks there definitely are some lessons we can learn.

The 9/11 attacks were decidedly low tech and inexpensive to execute. Our response, on the other hand, was anything but, and in this fact lies the crux of the problem.

Groups like Al-Qaeda can never hope to conquer us directly, but like a bee sting or virus, our reaction can have the desired effect. Like the immune response to the influenza virus, or the allergic response to a bee sting, it is the organism's own defenses that are its undoing.

The best that Al-Qaeda ever hoped to achieve was to send a powerful message and hope that the injury and economic dislocation would create enough upheaval to force us to alter our routines, lose productivity, and sacrifice the personal freedoms that make our Republic great.

On those counts, the 9/11 attacks probably exceeded Al-Qaeda's expectations. A small band of radicals with box cutter knives triggered over $4 trillion in war spending (and counting), all of which was financed by issuing debt instruments. The Patriot Act, as well as a series of additional pieces of legislation and executive orders, have resulted in massive domestic surveillance by our own government, and the economic measures implemented to help stimulate the economy (such as a relaxing the bank reserve requirements) led directly to the mortgage crisis and the economic crash of 2008.

Once the shock had resided, we should have acknowledged that we left ourselves vulnerable by not anticipating that a hijacker might use a plane as a weapon. And, it's not like that possibility wasn't discussed, it just wasn't something that we took seriously. By comparison, Israel has had reinforced cockpit doors and a no-negotiation policy for hijackers for decades ... we simply should have known better. So, one logical response would be to tighten up airline security.

Additionally, we should have used the massive goodwill and sympathy felt for the U.S. around the globe to increase world peace and form coalitions of sympathetic nations to act to interdict Al-Qaeda and their supporters/financiers wherever they may be. Similar to President George H. Bush's successful organization of a coalition that enabled us to push the Iraqi Army out of Kuwait and back to Baghdad and have all our expenses covered along the way, we could have formed a similar coalition to move against Al-Qaeda in an effective way that helped distribute the costs. Finally, our decision to use the nation's predisposition for war to invade Iraq was the biggest mistake of all. The deposed Iraqi Army leadership is now the secret to ISIS's success.

Also, there was no reason to believe at the time that a massive domestic surveillance machine, including a data warehouse that stores virtually all emails, texts and voice communications that ALL of us send and receive, would have interfered with the planning and execution of the 9/11 attacks. Perhaps if the FBI had paid attention to calls from instructors in Florida who reported having foreign students in their classes who only had interest in learning how to fly an airliner, but not how to take off or land. Instead, our legislators have granted the government powers that can easily be used in the future to intimidate and silence dissent.

Bottom line -- just take it easy. Never let anger, hatred or a desire for revenge distort your thinking. The higher the stress level, the more methodical and deliberate your decision-making must be. And, never, ever overreact.

The Martian Has Gone Insane

How do we intend to colonize another planet if we can't even transition
away from fossil fuels here at home?

Frankly, it is time to take a good, long, hard look at NASA and the future of space exploration.

The most common argument I've heard as to the reason we are pushing for a Mars colony is to preserve the human race in the event that life becomes impossible here on Earth. Are you kidding me? Is that even a remote possibility? And, if that possibility exists, WHY AREN'T WE PUTTING EVERY POSSIBLE EFFORT INTO PREVENTING IT FROM OCCURRING?

From my way of looking at it, as goes the Earth, so goes the human race. We are inextricably linked to our home planet, as we should be. I consider notions of moving the human race to another planet to be fundamentally heretical and insulting to a world that has provided us so with much.

There are still parts of the NASA program that are valuable and necessary, in particular the program to track objects in Space that might be on a collision course with us, and the program to monitor the Sun. The programs to sent orbiters to other planets to explore their composition are clearly fascinating, but of limited utility to us at home. The programs that have enabled us to look back billions of years and time and see some of the first clouds of gas condensing and forming stars is amazing stuff that helps us better comprehend our place in the Universe, but is, in practical terms, of limited use to us at home.

Casting a shadow over all of this is one difficult to refute fact: we are altering our climate in ways that could cause global temperature and weather to spin out of control. It's like we are standing in the middle of the road, peering upwards into the stars, while a tractor trailer is bearing down on us.

I would like to see the vast majority of NASA's budget repurposed to focus on climate change and renewable energy source development. We need to train those powerful telescopes back on Earth and work to get us weaned off of fossil fuels. Let's make that the new "moon shot".

Pharmaceutical Price Regulation

The 2-pack EpiPen has gone from $100 to over $600 since 2008

Mylan Laboratories, sensing that Teva Pharmaceuticals will soon get their generic version of the EpiPen approved, have been steadily hiking the price for the dosing pen in order to extract as much benefit as possible before increased competition drives down prices.

In 2008, the 2-pen pack carried a suggested retail price of $100. Today, the retail price is $608, although production costs have barely changed.

"So what?", you might ask. "Mylan operates in a free market environment where they have the freedom to set whatever price they may want."

In order to understand the "so what", we need to understand what the EpiPen does. The EpiPen is an easy-to-use dosing mechanism for injectable epinephrine, which is used to reverse anaphylactic shock in patients with certain life-threatening allergies. For people with those allergies the EpiPen can literally be the difference between life and a swift death.

Therefore, an exorbitant 6x increase in price will inevitably lead to reduced accessibility to the product and increased risk to those with certain allergies, and to difficult choices since dollars spent on the EpiPen compete with dollars spent on other health care priorities.

If you hear Mylan talk about it, the increase is altruistic in nature: by increasing the price to those with a pharmaceutical benefit to their health coverage they can fund programs to subsidize the pens to those who cannot afford them. So is Mylan Robin Hood, or simply robbin' da 'hood?

I would say the latter. Mylan is looking after its shareholders by seeking to extract as much benefit as possible from their monopoly position in the market for a necessary product before they lose that power.

That is why I believe that price lists for patent and off-patent drugs should be subject to FDA review and approval in order to prevent predatory pricing practices which inevitably emerge where the supplier has complete pricing power.

The FDA, in working with the pharmaceutical companies to set pricing, should take into account development costs, raw material costs, production costs, distribution costs and the extent to which public research played a role in drug development.

Additionally, the FDA should strictly regulate drug marketing. It is my opinion that prescription drugs should not be marketed directly to consumers by any media outlet.  Additionally, pharmaceutical companies should not be permitted to provide free samples to doctors, nor should they be permitted to engage in any other quid pro quo with physicians and hospitals that might be expected to result in more prescriptions being written for their products.

The pharmaceutical companies spend billions on samples and mass marketing, money that will flow to their bottom line under the new regime of FDA regulation. And, consumers and benefits companies will be able to better budget knowing that pricing for drugs is regulated and relatively stable.

In exchange, the U.S. Congress should cap pharmaceutical company liability for unexpected reactions or side effects that the developers of the drug and the FDA's own scientists did not anticipate.

These proposals will yield lower prices for brand-name drugs and robust profits for the pharmaceutical companies tasked with innovating and bringing to market life-saving remedies, slightly higher prices for most generics (which will attract more companies to this important market segment and help insure adequate drug supplies), and faster time to market for new medications and generics alike.

Slow Pulse Response

When you are bleeding from a gunshot wound, every second counts.

After analyzing the timeline of the Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting, one thing seems painfully clear: the authorities who responded were timid and ineffectual.

The assault began at 1:58 a.m. Somehow, the shooter made it past security and onto the dance floor where he opened fire. Hearing the shots, an armed off-duty police officer working security at the club engaged the shooter briefly, but quickly felt that he was "outgunned" and retreated to the street outside the club.

By 2:05 a.m. more officers had entered the club and exchanged fire with the shooter, including members of a SWAT team who just happened to be riding shotgun in a patrol car that was nearby. They, too, felt like their lives were being placed at risk by engaging the attacker, and retreated to await back up.

At 2:22 a.m. the shooter felt safe enough to start making phone calls to 911 to announce that this was, in fact, a terror attack and that he was an agent of ISIS. At 2:45 a.m. he called an Orlando television station and speaks to a producer. He starts scanning Facebook looking for comments about the attack. He even has time to post to his timeline.

By 2:51 a.m. the shooter is still actively shooting people. One victim, Eddie Jamoldroy Justice, is texting with his mother during the ordeal. His texts start at 2:09 a.m. and end at 2:51 a.m. when he is fatally shot.

Orlando Police tries to negotiate unsuccessfully with the shooter for the next two hours before deciding around 5 a.m. to detonate explosives and breach a wall with an armored vehicle. The shooter, apparently tired of the ordeal, emerges through the hole created by the breach of his own volition, engages with officers outside, and is fatally wounded.

The timidity demonstrated by the Orlando Police is shocking. This assault should have been over by 2:15 a.m. at the latest. From the time that the first officers engaged the shooter they should have applied constant pressure, at risk to their own well-being, until the shooter was neutralized. If the shooter retreated deeper into the building, the officers should have followed. If he barricaded himself in a bathroom, they should have stormed it. When there is an active shooter every second counts. Any hostages trapped with the shooter are effectively already dead, or will soon be dead, if the shooter is not neutralized. Therefore, extreme measures, including measures that put innocents at risk, must be used to prevent wider casualties.

Finally, we need officers who are willing and able to lay down their life in the line of duty, just as we have soldiers on the front line called on to do the same thing. That the initial responding officers would have felt that they were "outgunned" and retreated is unacceptable. They should have kept pressure on the shooter until one of them got close enough to take him out.

The way our authorities handled this angers me. It makes us look weak and ineffectual in the eyes of the world and increases the risk of similar attacks. I hope that local police forces across the country use this incident as a case study of how NOT to deal with a terrorist attack and act with much greater decisiveness, courage and lethality when this happens again.