Citizen Cartwright

Trump’s budget plan: $54 billion more for the military

The president intends to slash spending on many of the federal government’s most politically sensitive programs — on education, the environment, science and poverty — to protect the economic security of retirees and to shift $54 billion more to the armed forces.

Trump told governors in a White House meeting on Monday that his spending plan will be at the core of the speech he gives Tuesday night to a joint session of Congress.

"Trump appears determined to take sides in a generational struggle between older, sicker Americans who depend on the entitlement programs, and their younger, poorer counterparts whose livelihoods are shaped by the domestic programs likely to see steep cuts,” says The New York Times.

“I don’t know how you take $54 billion out without wholesale taking out entire departments,” says Bill Hoagland, a longtime Republican budget aide in the Senate and now a senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “You need to control it in the area of the entitlement programs, which he’s taken off the table. It is a proposal, I dare say, that will be dead on arrival even with a Republican Congress.”

Justice Department shifts on Texas voter ID law

The agency on Monday dropped a “crucial" objection to Texas’ strict voter-identification law, signaling a significant change from the Obama administration on voting-rights issues, says The New York Times.

"Under the Trump administration, the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department is expected to undergo the most severe shift in philosophy of any section under the Trump administration,” says the Times.

'We no longer have 3 branches of government'

That’s the headline of an article by Mickey Edwards, who served in the House for 16 years and then taught civics at Harvard and Princeton for 13 more, in Politico.
 
"Today’s 'separation of powers' is no longer between the three original, constitutionally created, branches of government, but between, on the one hand, a branch consisting of the president, his supporters in Congress and their mutual supporters on the federal bench; and on the other hand, a branch made up of the party in opposition to the president, his opponents in Congress and their co-partisans on the bench.”

As U.N. warns of superbugs, most Americans are clueless

In Britain, they call it the coming “antibiotic apocalypse.”

“Luck will play a bigger role in your future than any doctor could,” says a BBC News article from 2015.

A cut finger could leave you fighting for your life.

The most basic operations like an appendectomy or a hip replacement could kill you.

Childbirth. Cancer treatments. Organ transplants. Could kill.

Experts repeatedly have warned that we're on the cusp of a "post-antibiotic era," when some infections will be untreatable with existing drugs.

The U.N.’s World Health Organization on Monday released its first-ever list of superbugs — 12 families of bacteria that pose the greatest threat to human health.

Dr. Marie-Paule Kieny of the WHO says antibiotic resistance is reaching "alarming proportions," yet the drug pipeline is "practically dry."

Meanwhile, more than two-thirds of American adults know "little" or "nothing" about superbugs — bacterial infections that are resistant to many or all antibiotics, according to a new HealthDay/Harris poll. And about half of U.S. adults believe, incorrectly, that antibiotics work against viruses.

"We are fast running out of treatment options,” says Kieny. "If we leave it to market forces alone, the new antibiotics we most urgently need are not going to be developed in time."

Essentially, drug companies aren’t putting research and development money into antibiotics, which are taken for a couple of weeks, when a blockbuster medication might be taken by millions of people for the rest of their lives.

The WHO’s list is intended to spur governments to put in place policies that incentivize basic science and advanced R&D by both publicly funded agencies and the private sector to come up with new antibiotics.

As we humans dither about this, the advice for years has been to try to stay out of the hospital.

Here’s one example why: Hospital sinks expose people to superbugs, according to a new study.

More than 32 studies have described the spread of bacteria resistant to the last-resort antibiotic, carbapenem, through sinks and other areas where water can pool inside hospitals, the study authors say.

Readers: Please keep talking to your friends and family about this issue. It’s amazed me that governments haven’t done more. Innocent people already are dying needlessly.

Also in the news

Senate confirms Wilbur Ross to be Commerce secretary

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Burr under fire over ties to Trump

Top House conservative lawmakers oppose GOP health care plan

House leaders of Russia inquiry are split over whether it’s needed

House Democrats force GOP to take recorded vote on Trump tax returns

Trump: 'Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated'

George W. Bush: Free press is ‘indispensable to democracy’

More children are getting superbug infections

It’s been seven years since I started writing in this then-new blog about the threat of antibiotic-resistant infections.

As I try to maintain my journalistic objectivity, this is the only issue (so far) on which I’ve urged you to write to your congressional representatives — and urged you to urge your friends to do the same.

The latest news: A type of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infection has increased 700 percent in American children since 2007, according to an investigation published in the Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society.

This infection is caused by Enterobacteriaceae bacteria — normal bacteria that can become resistant to multiple drugs. Once only found in hospitals, the tough-to-treat infections are spreading into the community at large, say researchers who evaluated eight years of data.

"Efforts to control this trend are urgently needed from all of us, such as using antibiotics only when necessary, and eliminating agricultural use of antibiotics in healthy animals," says study author Dr. Sharon Meropol, a pediatrician with University Hospitals Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital in Cleveland.

And, as I mentioned in my first superbug item back in 2010, it's important to protect yourself by asking doctors and nurses to wash their hands before examining you. I've been doing this for years now, and only one doctor expressed any annoyance. Another doctor said, "Everybody should be asking this."

Also in the news

U.S. forces playing crucial role against Islamic State in Mosul

Amazon deforestation, once tamed, is roaring back

First big test for Mattis: Pitch plans to fight Islamic State and not alienate Trump

Navy secretary nominee Philip Bilden withdraws

In sweeping move, Trump puts regulation monitors in agencies

Trump faces pivotal week ahead as he addresses jittery GOP lawmakers

Trump’s blistering speech at CPAC follows Bannon blueprint

Trump intensifies attacks on journalists, condemns FBI ‘leakers’

Spicer targeting his own staff in leak crackdown

Trump administration considering move to speed development of self-driving cars

Democrats elect establishment favorite Thomas Perez as party chairman

ProPublica podcast: How reporters really use unnamed sources

Three free things journalists can do to protect their data and sources at the border

Can parental spyware apps for monitoring children's digital lives keep kids safe?

Drug overdose deaths have nearly tripled since 1999, CDC says

Trump rebranding of conservatives' big huddle

Not many years ago, Donald Trump was nearly denied a speaking slot at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference out of fears that he only wanted to promote himself.

Steve Bannon essentially was banished from the premises when he was running Breitbart News. So Bannon started a rival conference at a hotel down the street and called it The Uninvited.

What a difference an election makes.

Vice President Mike Pence was the keynote speaker at the gathering on Thursday, and top Trump advisers Kellyanne Conway, Steve Bannon and Reince Preibus were highlights on the crowded agenda.

Conway summed up a year of dramatic overhaul of the conservative movement, saying: "Tomorrow, this will be TPAC” (President Trump himself speaks on Friday morning).

Matt Schlapp, the head of the American Conservative Union, which holds the event, said Trump has been “pitch-perfect with conservatives as he starts his administration.” He complimented Trump’s Cabinet selections and his Supreme Court pick.

"We conservatives have an opportunity that only comes around every few generations,” Pence told the attendees at a suburban Maryland conference center. “My friends, this is our time.”

Bannon and Priebus appeared together on stage to show, according to some reports, a united front after speculation that Trump’s inner circle is divided.

"In regard to us two, I think the biggest misconception is everything that you're reading. We share an office suite together, we're basically together from 6:30 in the morning until about 11:00 at night,” said Priebus.

Bannon framed much of Trump’s agenda with the phrase, “deconstruction of the administrative state” — the system of taxes, regulations and trade pacts that Trump says have stymied economic growth and infringed on U.S. sovereignty. Bannon says the post-World War II political and economic consensus is failing and should be replaced with a system empowering ordinary people over coastal elites and international institutions.

"Bannon used some terms that are more often heard on the political left as negative labels, such as ‘globalist' and ‘corporatist,’ says The Washington Post. "Such words are rarely heard in a traditional Republican platform and underscore how Trump’s populism and suspicion of the world economy are in some respects similar to that of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., a self-described democratic socialist.

Also in the news

As Kelly and Tillerson visit Mexico, their reassurances differ from Trump's comments at White House

Trump wants to make sure U.S. nuclear arsenal is at 'top of the pack'

Trump administration rescinds Obama-era plan to reduce private prison use

Priebus reportedly asked the FBI to dispute reports linking Trump campaign to Russia

Spicer: Federal government could step up enforcement against marijuana use in states

Law professors file a misconduct complaint against Kellyanne Conway

GOP lawmaker who won’t hold a town hall invokes Giffords shooting. She responds: ‘Have some courage.’

Republican Governors Association outguns its Democratic counterpart in gearing up for next races

Jobs Americans do: Taking care of aging baby boomers is biggest driver of job growth in the economy

John Boehner: Republicans won't repeal and replace Obamacare

ProPublica: Big Pharma is quietly enlisting leading professors to justify $1,000-a-day drugs

A common herpes virus may be linked to heart disease, diabetes in some women

Note to email subscribers

Yesterday's item on President Trump's new immigration enforcement policies wasn't captured by the automatic program that sends out Citizen Cartwright emails.

If in the future you receive an email that looks incomplete, please know that the full publication is on the Citizen Cartwright website.