America's NIH Scientists Have a Cancer Breakthrough. Layoffs are Delaying It. (msn.com) 211
Scientists "demonstrated a promising step toward using a person's own immune cells to fight gastrointestinal cancers" at America's National Institutes of Health (or NIH), reports the Washington Post.
But the results were published in Nature Medicine on Tuesday — "the same day the agency was hit with devastating layoffs..." The treatment approach is still early in its development; the personalized immunotherapy regimen shrank tumors in only about a quarter of the patients with colon, rectal and other GI cancers enrolled in a clinical trial. But a researcher who was not involved in the study called the results "remarkable" because they highlight a path to a frustratingly elusive goal in medicine — harnessing a person's own immune defenses to target common solid tumor cancers. Until now, cell-based immunotherapy has worked mainly on blood cancers, such as leukemia, but not the solid cancers that seed tumors in the breast, brain, lungs, pancreas and GI tract...
But the progress arrives at a sad time for science — and for patients, said the leader of the work, NIH immunotherapy pioneer Steven Rosenberg. Two patients' treatments using the experimental therapy had to be delayed because NIH's capacity to make personalized cell therapies has been slowed by the firing of highly skilled staff and by purchasing slowdowns. Those occurred even before major layoffs took place Tuesday... The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) responded to an email asking about clinical trial delays with a statement: "NIH and HHS are complying with President Trump's executive order."
It's "a very exciting study," said Patrick Hwu, president of the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa. Finding ways to tailor this cell-based immunotherapy approach to common solid tumors that cause the vast majority of cancer deaths has remained a major scientific challenge... Rosenberg and colleagues first tried to create tumor infiltrating lymphocytes [or "TILs"] using the method that worked in melanoma for 18 patients with GI cancers that had spread. It failed completely. In a second iteration, his team sequenced the mutations present in each patient's tumor and used that information to sift out and expand the TILs that could home in on that patient's specific tumor cells. The results were far from a triumph, but provided a clue — this time, three of 39 patients' tumors shrank. In the last stage of the trial, the scientists added a drug called pembrolizumab that takes the brakes off immune cells. This time, eight of the 34 patients responded.
"Right now, only a few labs in the country can do what they just did," Hwu said.
While Rosenberg is already working "to refine and improve upon the results," he told the Post that two scientists involved in the specialized process of preparing the cells to treat patients were fired in the probationary purge. "We've had to slow down our work and delay the treatment of some patients...."
And there's also dramatically fewer people now who can purchase research materials, which the Post says it "making it slower and more difficult to obtain supplies."
But the results were published in Nature Medicine on Tuesday — "the same day the agency was hit with devastating layoffs..." The treatment approach is still early in its development; the personalized immunotherapy regimen shrank tumors in only about a quarter of the patients with colon, rectal and other GI cancers enrolled in a clinical trial. But a researcher who was not involved in the study called the results "remarkable" because they highlight a path to a frustratingly elusive goal in medicine — harnessing a person's own immune defenses to target common solid tumor cancers. Until now, cell-based immunotherapy has worked mainly on blood cancers, such as leukemia, but not the solid cancers that seed tumors in the breast, brain, lungs, pancreas and GI tract...
But the progress arrives at a sad time for science — and for patients, said the leader of the work, NIH immunotherapy pioneer Steven Rosenberg. Two patients' treatments using the experimental therapy had to be delayed because NIH's capacity to make personalized cell therapies has been slowed by the firing of highly skilled staff and by purchasing slowdowns. Those occurred even before major layoffs took place Tuesday... The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) responded to an email asking about clinical trial delays with a statement: "NIH and HHS are complying with President Trump's executive order."
It's "a very exciting study," said Patrick Hwu, president of the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa. Finding ways to tailor this cell-based immunotherapy approach to common solid tumors that cause the vast majority of cancer deaths has remained a major scientific challenge... Rosenberg and colleagues first tried to create tumor infiltrating lymphocytes [or "TILs"] using the method that worked in melanoma for 18 patients with GI cancers that had spread. It failed completely. In a second iteration, his team sequenced the mutations present in each patient's tumor and used that information to sift out and expand the TILs that could home in on that patient's specific tumor cells. The results were far from a triumph, but provided a clue — this time, three of 39 patients' tumors shrank. In the last stage of the trial, the scientists added a drug called pembrolizumab that takes the brakes off immune cells. This time, eight of the 34 patients responded.
"Right now, only a few labs in the country can do what they just did," Hwu said.
While Rosenberg is already working "to refine and improve upon the results," he told the Post that two scientists involved in the specialized process of preparing the cells to treat patients were fired in the probationary purge. "We've had to slow down our work and delay the treatment of some patients...."
And there's also dramatically fewer people now who can purchase research materials, which the Post says it "making it slower and more difficult to obtain supplies."
The "Find Out" phase continues... (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'm shocked (shocked!) that the guy who said he'd tear everything down with a wrecking ball, then set fire to the remains is doing exactly that.
People didn't believe he'd actually do those things, though they believed him about lowering the cost of "groceries", etc.. ...
They only heard and believed what they wanted. Now they get what they actually voted for
Donald Trump's Weird Definition Of "Groceries" Is Going Viral [buzzfeed.com]
Re:The "Find Out" phase continues... (Score:5, Insightful)
Shut down NIH funding and you shut down the ecosystem that produces these discoveries - including the one that might keep you alive when you need it.
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Remember, theres a guy now in charge of the CDC and rest of the govt med orgs who literally believes that vaccines can cause a disease that your born with (autism).
God knows how the whackos propose that, maybe via time travel. (Yes thats a ludicrous strawman and yet its the only logical way for vaccines to cause autism, by somehow travelling backwards in time to before birth).
HE is in charge, and its a goddamn travesty.
Re: The "Find Out" phase continues... (Score:3)
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Sure Ivan, whatever you say.
Re: The "Find Out" phase continues... (Score:4, Insightful)
Okay, but when you halt, like, all government funded cancer research, you're not just losing out on what looks promising. You're losing out on what was about to be promising. Or what wasn't promising, so you don't waste time studying it later. In short: We're also losing out on the "unknown unknowns."
This isn't just academic. A family friend had their clinical trial canceled.
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If you honestly believe there’s suddenly been a breakthrough in curing cancer that might translate into anything a sane world would hope for, you’re more gullible than a Biden believer drunk on Harris orator sauce.
We have made many breakthroughs in curing cancer over the years, and the survival rate dropping with treatment is a testament to that. Why are you so jaded? Did you only exist on a binary plain that can process "yes cancer exists" "no cancer stopped existing, we cured it"?
If so, don't ever comment on anything medical. Ever.
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>>more gullible than a Biden believer drunk on Harris orator sauce.
if you're trying to be clever you should take this bit back and workshop it a while
Yet even more evidence... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yet even more evidence little to no thought is going into these layoffs. "Promising results towards a cure for cancer? Well that's just going to have to wait because layoffs".
I'd have been in favor of an intelligent and thorough review of the bureaucracy followed by layoffs where appropriate but from what we've seen this administration has clearly skipped the review portion of the process and gone straight to layoffs. The Democrats are going to be left putting the pieces back together again for years after this and it will cost our country far more than any of these layoffs ever saved us.
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To be precise, this researcher claims to have "demonstrated a promising step", not "results". They say that the voyage of a thousand miles begins with a single step, but so does a trip to the refrigerator for another beer.
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Gotta love the ever insightful AC posters. They may not have two brain cells to rub together but they sure get an A for effort.
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Why are gay slurs the first word you think of?
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and to think you believe this is actually clever
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Don't be so hard on them, clearly they're doing their best!
A terrifying amount of thought is going into it (Score:3, Informative)
Basically they want to turn America into Saudi Arabia. A handful of kings and queens, a very tiny number of people serving them and a vast vast sea of extraordinarily poor people kept down by a combination of brutal violence and religion. All of it maintained
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We could have avoided all of this with a moderately warm meat sack with a (D) next to their name. I really hope the Democratic party gets their shit together.
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Besides, it's the policies of Democrats that are putting us on course to have fewer and fewer taxpayers surrounded by welfare recipients and illegal aliens.
Boy are you going to be surprised with what happens with welfare recipients when the coming recession arrives.
Claiming the party of "tax cuts for the wealthy" has done anything meaningful towards halting the decline of our middle class is laughable.
Small enough to drown in a bathtub (Score:2)
The right wing don't actually want to kill the baby (The baby is government in case you've lost track of the analogy). What they want is small state governments that they can control with their money and power because a large federal government can't be controlled. In as large as America it's too big and no amount of money can buy off every election. Overtime progress hap
The billionaires and the ruling class (Score:2)
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...statements made by Trump and those under his employ...
"They" are just a marketing term now, politics is marketing sadly. The "2025 papers" are just a stupid rallying cry like confederate flag supporters. Trump has no plan other than making himself look good, and maybe cheating a few rubes who deserved it. How can you tell when Trump is lying, hell, how can Trump tell when he's lying. I've known BS artists they just wing it, going for the most popular idea in the room. His party of fools may have a plan, but I suspect most of them are too much like Trump.
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Trump could UNcure cancer on 5th Ave. and still win
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Hahaha. You're ridiculous.
First you're contradicting me by telling me my own thoughts (thanks by the way, I didn't even know I was thinking those things!) and then you claim "we have no choice but to fire people almost at random". What utter bullshit. How is it so hard for someone in government to go "No let's not fire them, they're working on bird flu". And this shit KEEPS HAPPENING.
There is nothing impossible about properly reviewing the federal government one department at a time. It would just take both
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Who is going to review each of the thousands of departments one at a time to figure out that employees 72686 and 7190t0/zb6 are needed while 92827658 and 29395868 and 5254796 are not?
One accomplishes something like this in the same manner one approaches most seemingly impossibly large tasks. Break it down into approachable pieces and then get to work.
There is nothing impossible about reviewing the federal government. That's just a fiction you idiots are telling each other to feel better about your boy's idiot policies and actions. Firing FDA inspectors during a bird flu epidemic, firing vital nuclear arsenal employees, firing necessary medical researchers; none of these things are unavo
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I'd have been in favor of an intelligent and thorough review of the bureaucracy followed by layoffs where appropriate
Bullshit. You support the status quo and are aiming for paralysis by analysis. You're goal with that is to snow people who actually want smaller government by pretending to do something, when you know nothing will happen.
The bureaucracy is so huge, there is no way to go thru it intelligently.
Correct. That's why this approach will never work. And it doesn't get less stupid by doing less analysis and firing people more randomly. It just gets more harmful.
The federal work force is around 2% of all US employment! 2% does not sound like a lot but from a management perspective it is unfathomably massive. Hell most experienced managers with a team of 20 employees could not tell you with any real certainty which two contributed the least.
But they could tell you which ones were doing the least important work. The goal of cost-cutting should never be to cut based on who does the least, because that just means that the new guy who hasn't gotten as much on his plate yet gets fired arbitrarily. It's a short-sighted approach.
The right approach is to make it everyone's responsibili
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Not only is that crazy but these layoffs are not at all confined to new hires.
In regards to new hires though, very clearly someone with understanding of what their department needs has already determined these hires were necessary. That's why they were hired. While I'm sure in reality some were not actually necessary there are going to be a ton that were quite important that we're now just doing without.
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Probationary hires are not NEW interns! If you get promoted, you are probationary to the new position. Exceptional, old experienced people do get promoted. It's that probationary is the most easy way for a simpleton to search for easy to fire people. Next is to search keywords and fire anybody who comes up in the search. Finally, they are going to cross reference people against databases flagging people who oppose rapist felons and then claim the AI determined they were incompetent unintelligent employees
"Breakthrough" (Score:3, Insightful)
I keep hearing about miracle breakthroughs whenever researchers need money but they never go into production.
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Re:"Breakthrough" (Score:5, Informative)
Progress depends on the type of cancer, but overall research is making a substantial difference: Between 2000 and 2021, the cancer incidence rate per 100,000 people fell by 5.7%, while the mortality rate dropped by 27.5%. https://usafacts.org/articles/... [usafacts.org]
Recent immunotherapies like this one really do look like breakthroughs that will accelerate that rate of improvement. For instance, 2 minutes of googling showed this one reduced or eliminated tumors in 82% of patients such that no further treatment was needed, and that's across several different types of tumor-based (solid) cancer like TFA refers to. https://www.cancer.gov/news-ev... [cancer.gov]
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I keep hearing about cost savings and trimming the fat yet my grocery bill steadily climbs.
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I keep hearing about miracle breakthroughs whenever researchers need money but they never go into production.
WTF are you talking about. Miracle breakthroughs go into production all the time. Cancer is a really big field and we have made leaps and bounds in our ability to treat / cure people to the point where the typical approach to oncology is virtually incomparable to oncology of 10 years ago.
Your odds of dying have been hugely diminished. You can thank the medical profession that they don't withhold the breakthrough treatments from non-believers.
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What the NIH does is take risks; they spend money on things that are technically unknowns. THey can do that because the government can afford to whereas a private company might go out of business with risks like that. Once they find something that works and develops it, then companies can take over and bring them to market, which they're much better at than the government.
Keytruda [wikipedia.org] is an example
For the Fox News viewers (Score:4, Informative)
Federal salaries make up 5% of the country's budget. https://www.marketplace.org/20... [marketplace.org] Musk is doing theater for the simple minded.
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"I only take home $1000 a week. What can we cut?"
"We spend $50 a week on a maid service. Can we cut that?"
"Don't be simple-minded! That's only 5% of our budget!"
Re:For the Fox News viewers (Score:5, Informative)
You're equating the federal government with a maid service. Sigh.
I'll just remind you that this "maid service" does the following, in part:
- conducts research on diseases and epidemics .At least until recently.
- inspects the food we eat
- keeps aircraft from crashing into each other
- monitors and predicts weather patterns
- protects the country from invaders
- provides social security to retirees and others in need (e.g., disabled)
- provides medical insurance to retirees
- provides medical care and other services to veterans
- and so on
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Let's say I'm a bit overweight. I can put in some hard work to become more fit, make some changes in my lifestyle, exert some of that discipline everyone says other should use. Or, I can chop off one arm. Makes no difference - it's the same amount of weight either way, right? Hand me t
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IF "Fox News viewers" (see the title of the comment)
THINK THAT something is a luxury
AND it takes "just" 5% of the budget
THEN *to them* that 5% is worth cutting.
SO the problem is NOT to tell them "But it's only 5% of the budget"
IT IS to show them what they get for that 5%
And touting "A possible future cure for cancer" is lame as fuck.
Was that REALLY so hard to follow ?
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Complaining that what is being cut is too small a part of the budget to bother with means nothing will ever be cut.
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And a penny saved is a penny earned.
Complaining that what is being cut is too small a part of the budget to bother with means nothing will ever be cut.
+5 Insightful. It's a shame that I have no moderation points left.
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Do you honestly think you will somehow pay less taxes after all this? You're effectively paying higher taxes right now with tariffs on everything.
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If it were only just theater, then it would not be so bad. What he is doing is massive damage that may not even be fixable anymore.
NIH (Score:2)
So the cure for cancer was Not Invented Here.
Very dramatic article (Score:2)
Two probationary employees were let go. The rest are up for renewal in 2025 and 2026. Is this really a "catastrophe" or just Washington Post and MSN spin?
Layoffs suck but they have been a fact of life everywhere but the federal government. Now it's hitting them and they will have to manage like the rest of us in the private sector.
Is research Amendment-worthy? (Score:2)
From looking at everyone's reaction to this, I wonder if maybe people might support a constitutional amendment to make funding research hospitals become one of the government's powers/responsibilities.
Curing cancer, and many other health-related things, e.g. preventing spread of bird flu, are popular and people generally want that. Unfortunately, the constitution doesn't (at least not anywhere I can find) authorize the government to work on that.
We could try hacks like calling it "interstate commerce" or
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Congress explicitly has the power to do the postal service... and they've routinely fucked that up on purpose for small bribes with the goal of destroying it and ending their constitutional duty; which is inline with congress abdicating their power...
Congress has all the power it needs already; the constitution primarily isn't an authorization document - it mostly is restrictions on government and everything NOT listed is fair game - you have it completely backwards. Go actually read it this time.
Likely false (Score:2)
Remember, it's always easier to sell "hopelessness", it's human nature.
Tales from the Washington blob (Score:2)
Whining about layoffs! (Score:2)
Congress is a waste land when it comes to anyone doing their budgeting job and brain dead federal judges have taken control to stop any cuts or even fiscal responsibility at all at the federal level.
The fiscal collapse of the US federal government is going to be epic and a disaster for the poor and the middle class.
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Right... and Trump's tax cut in 2017 contributed massively. And the one he wants will bloat it beyond belief. Meanwhile, Tesla made $2B last year in the US... and paid ZERO in taxes.
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The problem was, that increases in federal deficit spending exceeded the increase in federal revenue.
The federal government does not have a revenue problem. The federal government has an out of control spending problem.
That's not how layoffs work (Score:2)
Who gets laid off doesn't come from Washington. That's a middle management decision. They are simply given a directive to reduce their headcount by a certain number or percentage. It's the middle managers who hand out the proverbial pink slips. Given that, clearly they had the choice to make. If they were rational people, then the decision hinged on which research would be the most beneficial. That may or may not be the case in this instance. On the surface, it sounds promising but so does a lot of o
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In a normal layoff mode, that's true. But this particular set of layoffs started off with "everyone who was hired or promoted in the past two years, and thus "probationary" is out".
So, the process started with a giant existing hole of anyone hired to meet some recent need, and also those who were doing well enough to have gotten promoted to a new position.
That's irrationality from the top, long before surviving middle managers have to see how to execute their cuts on what remains and inject their own irrat
Riiiight (Score:2)
I'd say it'll kill their credibility, but they don't have a whole lot left after deciding that after four months into a pandemic they went from "you want to kill grandma" to "this social cause is justification for large gatherings."
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"it doesn’t appear to me that the Trump administration is actually striking terror into foreign governments so much as repeatedly punching itself in the face."
https://archive.ph/7QAiw/again?url=https://www.ft.com/content/64937cfe-bb62-4a0a-990f-503344e9c58a
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Make America Healthy Again!
And live long enough to use Social Security and Medicare -- oh, wait ... /s
(Or at least try to use them, given all the chain-sawing.)
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This is an utterly insane post.
Re:relevant Trump lie (Score:5, Insightful)
The unmitigated gall for this lady to accuse the Democrats of being obsessed with personality as conservatives have given themselves fully over to cargo-cult personalist politics while they abandon all their principles they told me they believed for the previous decades of our lives.
Free trade? Nope, not anymore.
Education? That's for losers, sew the shirts you peasant.
America as leader of the free world? That's baby stuff, abandon your allies, isolate yourself.
Freedom of speech? So long as your don't say anything bad about *King Trump*
Privacy from the government? Too bad, illegally sieze those IRS records so we can deport people. ICE can use whatever info it wants no matter how privacy invading it is. We pinky swear this won't used nefariously.
Respect for the courts and the process? Nah, that takes too long and is too much work, just go around it.
This is also the admin who is shipping people off to a 3rd world concentration camp and now Republicans are fine because "those are the wrong kind of people"
Every accusation is a projection. Conservative principles aren't a pedestal anymore, they're made of sand. It's absolutely pathetic.
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The unmitigated gall for this lady to accuse the Democrats of being obsessed with personality as conservatives have given themselves fully over to cargo-cult personalist politics while they abandon all their principles they told me they believed for the previous decades of our lives.
It's the typical Trump-ish playbook - yell loudly that the other group is doing something that your group is actually the one doing. Seems to work pretty well with the MAGA faithful.
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Free trade? Nope, not anymore.
Education? That's for losers, sew the shirts you peasant.
America as leader of the free world? That's baby stuff, abandon your allies, isolate yourself.
Freedom of speech? So long as your don't say anything bad about *King Trump*
Privacy from the government? Too bad, illegally sieze those IRS records so we can deport people. ICE can use whatever info it wants no matter how privacy invading it is. We pinky swear this won't used nefariously.
Respect for the courts and the process? Nah, that takes too long and is too much work, just go around it.
You forgot state's rights.
Re: relevant Trump lie (Score:2)
Re:relevant Trump lie (Score:4, Insightful)
Crippling debt spending? You mean the Reagan tax cuts that Clinton had to fix. Or do you mean the Bush Jr. tax cuts that Obama failed to fix, or el Bunko's last round of tax cuts? All these increased the debt and didn't nothing for the economy. Rich people do not spend enough and investment will follow demand, not because you gave rich people more money to piss off on their foibles.
So take you large large-number poster index and shove it. It is clear you do not have the length of time necessary to keep track of the idiot Maggot policies that started under Reagan.
BTW: our Gambler-in-Chief decided in 2007 to go all in on real estate because he thought the U.S. was in for a boom in real estate. Then 2008-9 happened. And now he's gambling with the entire U.S. economy.
As for running the U.S. like a business, would this be one of his businesses? The ones he ran into the ground 6-7 times? His "real estate" business which could only turn a profit through fraud? Or maybe you consider this list of his bunks to be "businesses" (and I've skipped several):
1. Shitcoins
2. Sneakers
3. NFTs with him doing stupid shit
4. Watches
5. Fragrances
6. Cabinet positions: he promises “cabinet advisory positions” to the Maggots in emails, all you need to get one is contribute to him.
7. Bibles
8. His "media company".....just announced they "lost" $400 million in the last year. That's $400 million of other people's money he and his cronies have made off with.
9. The el Bunko guitar
10. Shirts with he and Elmo on them
11. Gold one dollar bills
12. Gold Bars
13. Siphoning money from criminal seizures into a National “Strategic” Bitcoin Reserve thereby increasing money into the shitcoin industry and his own shitcoins.
14. Cabinet positions for his billionaire “contributors”
15. Advertising Teslas on the White House lawn. The Bunk: Elmo announced he’s putting another $100 million into el Bunko’s political operation.
16. $447,000 Birken Crocodile Handbag.
All of his tat is made in China. And he is hawking it now from the Oval Orifice.
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Please do explain the path forward that will offer you prosperity. Might I offer you an egg while you get your thoughts together?
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Trade leads to prosperity. We have a case study of the last few decades to know that. Globalization already happened, no way to put the genie back in the bottle. I disagree with the strategy of taking us to the Great Depression for some kind of hypothetical return to a golden era that only exists in people's heads.
What else? Hmm.. there's the obvious one: Hard work and steady improvements to infrastructure, regulation, and services. Human beings are a nation's resource, if we invest in them wisely it will p
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Trade leads to prosperity.
Not if nobody wants to trade with you. Enjoy.
Re:relevant Trump lie (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh sweetie; you still have bought into the lie that "conservatives" are for fiscal responsibility.
I absolutely miss the naiveté of youth.
Debt added by President (percent change):
Trump (1st term) $8,184,018,553,995.10 (40.43%)
George W. Bush: $6,102,365,591,311.64 (105.08%)
George H. W. Bush: $1,554,057,922,952.06 (54.39%)
Ronald Reagan: $1,859,575,960,187.32 (186.36%)
Gerald Ford: $223,780,184,268.45 (47.11%)
Richard Nixon: $121,339,561,890.14 (34.30%)
The next time a Republican administration doesn't add at least a third onto the debt will be the first since 1960. But please do go on about how Trump is the first politician in your lifetime to offer a path to prosperity, when he added $8T of debt in 4 years, and sublimated $5T of value in a week.
Maybe listen to what some older folks have to say, because you clearly don't know a god damn thing about what you're talking about.
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Yeah, Trump would destroy the cure if he "had" it. Democrats know that if Trump were to have the cure for cancer he would deny it to the people to spite his enemies. And it's not just Democrats, is all thinking people, it's everyone not in the Trump cult.
Why would Trump destroy any cure for cancer?
Because he's rich, and rich people think differently than the rest of us. To a normal person, a cure for cancer is a miracle, something that is desperately needed, and something that people will be incredibly grateful for. To a wealthy person, a cure for cancer is something that is worth a nearly infinite amount of money, and they should be paid commensurately for it. If they can't get an infinite amount of money for the cure, it is better to get a large amount of money on a treatment so that if you stop
Re:Silly premise (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it's silly, but expected, because it gets in the headlines written by lazy journalists (as here) whereas deeper, more thought-out objections to Trump's actions won't ( or don't exist ).
Re: Oh Jesus Christ (Score:4, Insightful)
In a few weeks, months at the most, they'll reorganize and move forward again on whatever this really is.
We're already 2.5 months into this administration. When will the winning begin? How long should we stay quiet and wait?
I know you want to believe that this administration is carefully removing redundant workers. But when they arbitrarily cut all the new staff and then a bunch of existing staff, with no consideration for the value of what they do or who will replace them, at some point you have to conclude that these are blind ideologues, not enlightened leaders.
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No shit. This is still better than the alternative which was presented.
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Care to elaborate?
Re: Oh Jesus Christ (Score:3, Insightful)
If you can presuppose a Harris-Waltz Adminstrating worse than what we're seeing, you can presuppose it to be worse than anything.
I'll spell it out for you: You're the voter who would still vote for Trump if he shot someone on 5th Ave.
It Depends (Score:2)
When will the winning begin?
It started for Trump and his friends in January. I think you mean when will the winning begin for everyone else. I suspect the answer to that will be closely tied to your election cycle.
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so what you're saying is, "the next six months will be crucial"
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I'm sick of paying for redundant federal workers, every one of which thinks their job is irreplaceable simply because managers have never been under pressure to do more with less.
It's remarkable how confidently sweeping statements are made about organizations, especially by those with little to no understanding of how they actually function. But sure, keep believing the narrative.
Re:Oh Jesus Christ (Score:5, Informative)
Yep. My wife is a state worker in the department of health who is primarily funded via federal grants. This latest round of funding claw backs is not doing anything to promote efficiency. Her team was already decimated and they were already trying to "do more with less". Now they are losing even more people with institutional knowledge. If "making America healthy again" is the priority, the government sure does have a funny way of showing it by cutting funding for health departments across the board.
Re:Oh Jesus Christ (Score:5, Interesting)
This is like the CDC STD lab effectively being shut down [statnews.com]. Now there is no way to track STD outbreaks on a national scale, no sharing of information among states, no central location to get the information on drug resistant STDS.
Another side effect of this is the Social Security web site, which millions of people depend on, has crashed five times [newsweek.com] in the last month [gizmodo.com]. That couldn't have anything to do with the vast majority of its IT staff being fired, could it?
Certainly there are some jobs which can go away, but taking a chainsaw to critical services without regard for operational needs is not the way to do it. It's a deliberate act designed to show how bad government is when the culprit are the people who have no idea what they're doing making decisions on a whim. Then again, this shouldn't surprise anyone. We've all seen what failures these people's businesses are.
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Re: Oh Jesus Christ (Score:3)
Probably similar for government spending. This is not solved by halving the budget though. Oh well... the proof is in the pudding. Let Trump and Musk have their way. We will find out who was right. Greetings from the other side of the ocean.
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What's worse? Forcing this research into the private sector, or having millions die in the depression resulting from the economic collapse that will result from the National Debt exceeding our ability to handle it?
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If Trump were doing anything about the deficit then you might have a point, but he's suggesting increasing it through tax cuts and has implemented cuts to the IRS (meaning we're not even collecting all the money that's owed). Shows it's not a serious priority and I would expect to see the deficit skyrocket as the economy collapses
Re: Oh Jesus Christ (Score:4, Informative)
", but he's suggesting increasing it through tax cuts and has implemented cuts to the IRS (meaning we're not even collecting all the money that's owed). "
We're already failing to collect almost a trillion dollars a year. Why? Because the income taxes are a very poor way to raise revenue. They are way too easily avoided, and way to easily defrauded (evasion.)
But the most important feature is that the income taxes severely suppress American business profitability. That is why, whenever they are cut - Kennedy, Reagan, and Trump 45, revenues to the US Treasury go UP! Income taxes are a corrosive influence on the economy. Trump is trying to replace them with tariffs. He said he wants to have the Department of External Revenue to collect taxes via tariffs, and shut down the Department of Internal Revenue. Wants no taxes on tips, no taxes on overtime, and no taxes on Social Security. After that, no taxes on anyone making under $150,000. Eventually, no income taxes at all. We probably can't do that with tariffs, but we could do it with the FairTax. It's a sales tax on luxuries. That is, new items for sale at retail, and services. A new Cadillac is a luxury. A used Cadillac is not. Food / clothing / housing is not, if they are priced under the poverty level. Poor person paying $750 for a 1-BR apt. doesn't get taxed. Rich guy buying a new house does. Etc. The income tax's 16th Amendment was the 2nd biggest mistake ever perpetrated on this continent, the worst was slavery, but we didn't even do #1, since it was the British that did it, and the founders wrote "inalienable rights" into the documents as a tool to eventually abolish it. The USA may not be perfect, but it is the only country in the history of man that has fought a war to free its slaves.
Re: Oh Jesus Christ (Score:4, Insightful)
it is the only country in the history of man that has fought a war to free its slaves
So much of what you say in this post is nonsense, and I would love to debate them all, but let me just take this simple one: it is extremely revisionist of you to say that the U.S. fought a war to free its slaves while neglecting the fact that about HALF of the country tried to secede (and then went to war) in order to allow them to KEEP slaves. And, then in the years following the end of the Civil War, many of the powerful (white) people (both north and south), did everything they could to create and enforce a caste system built on race...so, yay USA?
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Yeah, that one was pretty bizarre. How does the GP think it's better that the country went to war to free it's slaves rather than just... freeing its slaves as most other countries did?
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so the NIH scientists studying cancer are "redundant", eh
Re:Oh Jesus Christ (Score:4, Informative)
Sane people would figure out the reorganization before destroying what's already there. Also, there are statutes involved - laws passed by Congress - on what gets funded and, to some extent, what the structure of these agencies are.
What's happening now is the wrecking crew is smashing the walls of our house, before the architect and interior designer have even had a chance to see it, let alone get permits for the job. "Yeah, well, those walls were leaky and the paint was peeling anyway. That drain pipe was always slow. I can do without them for a few weeks - months at most! Why's the housing inspector in such a snit?"
Or, in the computer realm: "I'm taking down our production server and wiping the codebase. We're gonna go back to square one and think of a new implementation - a better one! I'm sure it'll only take a few months to refactor. No one will miss it in the meantime."
Are you really this daft to think this is a good way to do things?
Re:Oh Jesus Christ (Score:4, Insightful)
Sane people would figure out the reorganization before destroying what's already there.
You're failing to understand the motives of the people involved.
The motives of the leadership in the various departments who are making the final decisions are straightforward. They're trying to protect their fiefdom over the long term. To that end, cutting people that are expendable isn't the logical strategy. No, they'll keep them in case they have to lay someone off later to make room for something more critical.
Instead, the logical strategy is to cut the people who will cause the most damage and/or negative press, knowing that the people insisting on the cuts will be blamed, and that their public evisceration will serve as a cautionary tale to others who might think about making cuts.
This is why you do not do things this way if you actually want to succeed in reducing costs over the long term. That approach ALWAYS fails.
And Trump's motive is taking a wrecking ball to the government. Whether it is because he is a Russian asset or because he genuinely believes that the federal government is a waste of money and he doesn't want to pay taxes is unclear, but he really meant it when he said he would tear everything down, and unlike the actual Jesus, he didn't say he would rebuild it in three days. And he doesn't care about the harm, because he knows he won't be here in four years anyway.
There was zero chance of this ending well.
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Or, in the computer realm: "I'm taking down our production server and wiping the codebase. We're gonna go back to square one and think of a new implementation - a better one! I'm sure it'll only take a few months to refactor. No one will miss it in the meantime."
Musk actually did a version of that at Twitter after he bought it. He wanted to save money by moving 6000 tons of server racks to a data center 600 miles away. His engineers and managers told him (on Christmas Eve, I believe) that they would work up a plan to do it. Musk insisted he could do it himself in two weeks and he tried -- and completely failed -- without doing the most basic of back of the envelope calculations on the logistics. If he hadn't threatened to fire anyone who spoke against his plan, one
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Then why bother listing an uninhabited island? The entire premise is nearly identical to the answer ChatGPT gives. https://www.theverge.com/news/... [theverge.com]
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What great thing it must be for you folks to have the invisible boogy man that is "the deep state".
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Every $1 the NIH generates $2+ of economic activity.
NIH supports much of the first step research that pharma companies turn into clinical trials and products later. GLP-1 began in part with NIH research.
What you are asking for would mean the NIH should have more funding and more authority. Wanna bet if Keytruda get's more or less expensive byt the end of this term.
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Will Keytruda be more expensive by the end of this term? Answer my question please.