Mitt Romney
milhayser | February 21, 2014The story starts off predictably enough for a grandiose adventure: a wizard, a prophecy, an unwitting hero. Emmet is just a model construction worker, living his city life to the tee by following every rule in the book. He is manically happy just to be doing it right: greeting his alarm clock with a smile, doing some calisthenics, watching his favorite sitcom before heading out for an overpriced coffee and a fulfilling day on the job. He feels like he has friends, that he's part of something. Then a mysterious woman who's obviously not playing by the rules leads him to fall down an…
milhayser | February 4, 2014The price of human genome sequencing has fallen spectacularly since the turn of the century; what then cost $100,000,000 is now promised for only $1000. This race toward zero makes even Moore's Law look like a snail's pace, but the $1000 price tag does come with a couple asterisks. For one, providers will need high demand to pay off the multi-million dollar sequencing array that makes it possible, and low demand should result in higher prices. For two, $1000 will only buy you a rough draft of your genome. On Discovering Biology in a Digital World, Todd Smith writes "While some sequencing…
lborkowski | October 31, 2012Things are mostly back to normal in DC today: Schools and government offices are open, trains and buses are running on their usual schedules, and there are few outward signs that Hurricane (or Superstorm) Sandy passed through here less than 48 hours ago. The situation is apparently far worse in New York and New Jersey, where flooding damaged millions of homes and hundreds of miles of subway tunnels. Millions of people from the Carolinas to Maine lost power, and many are still without it. The US death toll has reached 40.
With Election Day less than a week away, Hurricane Sandy reminds us how…
oracknows | October 18, 2012The 2012 election campaign is in full swing, and, for better or worse, health care is one of the major defining issues of the election. How can it not be, given the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), also colloquially known as "Obamacare," was one of the Obama administration's major accomplishments and arguably the largest remaking of the American health care system since Medicare in 1965? It's also been singularly unpopular thus far, contributing to the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in the 2010 elections, as well as the erosion of…
denialism | October 1, 2012Slate has an interesting article about Romney campaign mailings that appear to contain buzzwords for chronic Lyme disease advocates in Virginia. Romney's plan for Lyme disease includes these two points:
IMPROVE SYNERGY
Ensure that government agencies have an open line of communication and work with patients, researchers, doctors, and businesses in an objective, comprehensive manner.
SUPPORT TREATMENT
Encourage increased options for the treatment of Lyme Disease and provide local physicians with protection from lawsuits to ensure they can treat the disease with the aggressive antibiotics…
illconsidered | September 4, 2012Most of you will have heard by now of Mitt Romney's convention chuckle at the expense of the global biosphere, of which you and your family are of a part:
"President Obama promised to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet. My promise is to help you and your family."
(Full text is here)
Bill McKibben's tweet in response is pretty perfect: "On some other planet, apparently". Planet3.0 has a lengthier and very good exposition on what underlies the success of such a mockery.
My only thought on what Dan has written is that all us concerned individuals in the greater blogosphere…
cmonforton | April 17, 2012Mr. Mitt Romney spoke this weekend at the National Rifle Association's (NRA) annual convention and kicked off his remarks applauding the gun-lovers group's defense of the 2nd amendment to the Constitution. "This fine organization is sometimes called a single-issue group," Romney said. "That's high praise when the single issue is freedom.
I love my freedom as much as the next person, but I sure don't believe that background checks on individuals purchasing guns and appropriate waiting periods are a gross assault on individual liberty. We in public health consider violence a preventable…
cmonforton | March 12, 2012Making a $10,000 bet, insulting people for wearing plastic rain ponchos, and asserting that $374,000 is not much to earn in speaking fees are just a few examples of Mitt Romney being out of touch. The Republican Presidential hopeful doesn't seem to have a clue either about how federal agencies like EPA and OSHA conduct their work. On Romney's website, his issue brief on "Regulations" says:
"A look across the landscape shows that federal agencies today have near plenary power to issue whatever regulations they see fit. Though most are nominally controlled by the president, in actual…
sastyk | February 2, 2012Now let's be clear - we all knew Mitt Romney did not give a flying fuck about the poor. Other than the occasional service provider, he's never met any poor people, first of all. Moreover, it is a fact that no presidential candidate, Democratic or Republican for the last 30 years has cared about the very poor. Add in the fact that Mitt demonstrably cares only about his hair, campaign donors (not a lot of them among the very poor) and getting elected, and this isn't exactly news.
GOP front-runner Mitt Romney said this morning that he's not concerned about the plight of the country's very…
ddobbs | June 18, 2009
A key component of health-care reform -- and saving our ass from going bankrupt and sick from spending too much on lousy treatments -- is establishing comparative effectiveness measures, otherwise known as "actually knowing WTF works and what doesn't."
This idea terrifies companies who don't want such objective measures. It also generates a lot of fear, partly via confusing or intentionally frightening arguments. Yet making sure we don't pay for stuff that doesn't work is key to reform -- a point made in this Times op-ed from libertarian economist Tyler Cohen, keeper of the blog Marginal…