"Tax expenditures" are subsidies delivered through the tax code as deductions, exclusions, and other tax preferences. ... Tax expenditures reduce the amount of tax that households or corporations owe."

Look, they are good in theory because they can help retirees stay in their homes.

#49 | POSTED BY SYCOPHANT AT 2019-06-14 12:19 PM | REPLY

They are a profit model designed by a corporation to intentionally maximise profit. The talking points about benefitting the homeowner they use to sell it are just shiny ribbons on the box of poo

I don't live in Mulla infested Iran..

#63 | POSTED BY CLOWNSHACK AT 2019-06-14 10:11 PM | REPLY

You live in Republican infested USA; At least there are only a few handfuls of mullahs

I know a few Dems have some high spending plans. But what's the Democratic Party's plan

the plan is to spend $1 if it prevents us from having to spend $5 and to not "save" $1 if it forces us to pay $10 later

cutting taxes doesn't always save money and cutting spending doesn't always lower costs

Repubicans have back of a napkin math that says the laffer curve peaks at about 2% taxation. Democrats know that we are nowhere near the peak of the laffer curve which actual math tm has shown to be in the 60-70% range. Left of the peak raising taxes does always raise revenue.

Even in its most simplistic variant cutting taxes when the effective rate is 29.6% will never even maybe increase tax collection. It may be that we collect more taxes due to unrelated market forces such as new products or technology breakthroughs but not because we lowered tax rates.

But how is a cop to know the intention of every person acting strangely and possessing a weapon?

#10 | POSTED BY SHEEPLESCHISM AT 2019-06-13 03:38 PM |

But hey lets make sure everyone has a weapon so that everyone you deem to be acting strangely has a weapon

Our deficit is ballooning because we chose to cut taxes and borrow money to pay for things that taxes should have. Not one dime should be cut from medical research, job training, health and safety programs until the military budget is cut in half. The problem is not spending the problem is spending on things that do not provode a benefit to the nation. Spending $40 billion a year to have an educated workforce is a better option than spending $40 billion per year replacing nuclear warheads we will never use. Both have an identical effect on the budget

You think kidnap victims should be put in penal style camps. Dont you see how wrong that is?

What's the alternative?

#30 | POSTED BY CLOWNSHACK AT 2019-06-13 04:01 PM

Oh maybe what we did before we separated them from their families and put them in prison camps?

The ads themselves were pure fraud. We pay you for the rest of your life and you get to keep your home. FREE MONEY!!! Knowing full well the purpose was to con elderly people and take their homes for pennies on the dollar.

The preamble of the constitution is the mission statement. It descibes the purpose of having a country and a government. It is the why of our government. The body and the amendments are the who and how.

The preamble is every bit as important as everything that comes afterwards

So yes foreign investment is part of the problem

Do you think there could be any relationship between homelessness, stagnant wages, massive real estate investment by flippers who add as much as a 400% speculatin premium to housing prices, Current administration encouragement of foreign real estate investment, and media glorification of get rich quick real estate schemes?

Please define that.

#46 | POSTED BY IRAGOLDBERG AT 2019-06-09 11:51 PM | REPLY

Healthcare Quality and Access (HAQ) Index Rating, 2016

Netherlands
96.1
Australia
95.9
Sweden
95.5
Japan
94.1
Austria
93.9
Comparable Countries
93.7
Germany
92
France
91.7
United Kingdom
90.5
United States
88.7

Age-standardized Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALY) rate per 100,000 population, 2017
United States
24,306
United Kingdom
20,121
Germany
19,580
Belgium
19,465
Canada
19,227
Australia
19,038
Netherlands
18,716
Austria
18,621
Comparable Country Average
18,533
Sweden
18,002
France
17,833
Switzerland
17,048
Japan
16,214

Percent of adults who have experienced medical, medication, or lab errors or delays in past two years, 2016
United States
19%
Sweden
17%
Canada
15%
Switzerland
14%
Comparable Country Average
12%
United Kingdom
11%
Australia
11%
Netherlands
10%
France
8%
Germany
7%

Percent of adults who made a same-day or next day appointment when needed care, 2016
Netherlands
77%
Australia
67%
Comparable Country Average
57%
United Kingdom
57%
France
56%
Germany
53%
United States
51%
Sweden
49%
Canada
43%

Please define that. If someone needs a serious surgery, they come to the US. When people need medicine, they buy drugs invented in the US. If the rest of the world was cut off from US medical advances, global life expectancy would drop 20 years.

#46 | POSTED BY IRAGOLDBERG AT 2019-06-09 11:51 PM | REPLY |

For every person who comes to America for Medical Tourism twice as many Americans go elsewhere

If we dropped the US price to the world price without raising the world price, profits would vanish - and the amount of research/breakthroughs along with it. You strike me as one of those people that believes communism works because people will always try their best regardless of financial returns. That thinking is completely debunked by every attempt ever made at implementing communism.

#41 | POSTED BY IRAGOLDBERG AT 2019-06-09 03:02 AM | REPLY

SO how do WE drop the price of drugs manufactured by a transnational corporation? Are you saying we should go full Venezuela and nationalize the pharmaceutical companies?

I expect Democrats to care if they ever want my vote.
But Obama didn't fix it.

#6 | POSTED BY SHEEPLESCHISM AT 2019-06-08 05:55 PM | REPLY

Democrats do care. That is not what you want. What you want is for them to accomplish everything your Republican cohort oposses with active opposition from the republicans. You expect them to somehow get a 2/3 majority in a senate controlled by republicans who have no intention to let good things happen to the country if anyone other then themselves benefit from it or there is any cost.

If tens of thousands streaming across our boarder monthly is not a crisis [according to lefties] then there is no way this piddly situation is a crisis.

#20 | POSTED BY MSGT AT 2019-06-09 10:57 AM | REPLY

It is the right wing presenting it as a crisis. The left just sees it as a big city problem

Come to Texas and savor the culture.

#16 | POSTED BY ZED AT 2019-06-09 10:37 AM | REPLY

It is nice how they have appropriated all the Mexican ways

Yea, you can use convicts as slave labor.

#19 | POSTED BY DOCNJO AT 2019-06-09 08:52 AM | REPLY

Legal does not equal right. Sometimes it just equals kickbacks for politicians.

And that statutes is a federal law and only covers federal prisoners. States can write their own rules.

And what country did this occur in -------? China? UK? No - USA.

#39 | POSTED BY IRAGOLDBERG AT 2019-06-08 10:24 PM | REPLY

So you are Ok with paying corporations 1000's of times the actual cost of medication?

Noted.

If Federal tax dollars pay for the research the results should be owned by the taxpayers who funded it.

Discovered 2015 by, you guessed it, the US and our for profit system.

#31 | POSTED BY IRAGOLDBERG AT 2019-06-08 11:51 AM |

Wrong as usual. Discovered by our Socialist Grant sponsored Colleges and MARKETED by our for profit system. Most big pharma R&D is in how to extend patents, not how to make new drugs. They do very little basic research. They only get involved after a Government grant funded scientist takes a discovery to the point where it shows profit potential.

Historically, the largest government investments in basic drug discovery research have been made by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has also contributed to the discovery stage by taking on some relatively high-risk biologic projects. Moreover, in part as a result of the public's impatience with the slow pace of the discovery process, state governments are increasingly taking the initiative in this area. One such example is the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, a state agency established in 2005 by the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative, which provides grants and loans for stem cell research and facilities at California's research institutions and universities. Another example is the Texas Cancer Initiative, under which state funds are dedicated to cancer research conducted in Texas.

NIH funding has not increased significantly since its budget doubled from $13 billion in 1998 to $26 billion in 2003, and given inflation, its investment power has actually diminished over the last 5 years, in effect reducing the dollars available for funding new research. Fewer investments in basic research can result in fewer new drug therapy candidates, which in turn can result in fewer investments by private industry to advance promising candidates.

Late-stage development is funded primarily by pharmaceutical companies or venture capitalists with some collaborative support from government sources, such as NIH. Such partnerships are critical in the transition from proof of concept to clinical development.

The CISI study, underwritten by the National Biomedical Research Foundation, mapped the relationship between NIH-funded research and every new drug approved by the FDA between 2010 and 2016. The authors found that each of the 210 medicines approved for market came out of research supported by the NIH. Of the $100 billion it spent nationally during this period, more than half of it -- $64 billion -- ended up helping the development of 84 first-in-class drugs.

But the NIH doesn't get to use the profits from these drugs to fund more research, the way it might under a model based on developing needed drugs and curing the sick, as opposed to serving Wall Street. Instead, publicly funded labs conduct years of basic research to get to a breakthrough, which is then snatched up, tweaked, and patented (privatized) by companies who turn around and reap billions with 1,000-times-cost mark-ups on drugs developed with taxpayer money.

The article you posted doesn't refute anything I said. We need new antibiotics. It doesn't matter how much we spend if we spend it all looking for ----- pills.

We have produced lots of innovation IN THINGS THAT CAN BE MONETIZED QUICKLY.

The market disincentivises research into the most important parts of medicine. Funding is limited. If the goal is maximizing profit do you spend that money looking for symptom treatment meds you can put someone on at $100/day for life or do you spend the same amount of money looking for curative antibiotic drugs that patients will take for 5 days and maybe never again?

The problems with 5G

1) It is very short range. It will take 120 radios to cover the same area as 1 4g LTE Cell tower
2) It is very very very susceptible to scatter. 5G cannot penetrate a water droplet or single pane of glass
3) It is very directional. radios will initially be installed on light posts and street signs but will only cover the roadway to about 15' height. The initial installation will focus on autonomous vehicles. On the sidewalk? Q3 2020 rollout if you are lucky
4) advertising you see now is for 5Ge. 5Ge is 4G under the hood. It is NOT 5G

The pros

Verizon has budgeted intsallation of 800,000 radios in the USA by Q2 2020
5G is very very fast
5G is inherently more secure than 4G and older The same range, directional and scatter properties that make it hard to implement make it hard to capture