Skip to main content

Connectioning Three Seemingly Disparate Pieces of Data


  1. Dr. Amy Reed, an anesthesiologist from Boston, has advanced cancer, possibly spread by a device called a morcellator.
  2. According to highly –esteemed analyst Stephanie Pomboy of Macro Mavens, as quoted in Barron’s July 12th 2014 edition, there are three million four hundred thousand (3,400,000) fewer fulltime workers now than before the Great Recession.
  3. The FDA is proposing regulation of cigar manufacturers and a stunning tax on cigars.

How are these three things connected?

Before we get into that, let us thank Dr. Amy Reed, who is battling Stage Four cancer, for raising the issue of the risks that may be associated with using the morbidly named “morcellator” in association with hysterectomies.  More on that here.  Dr. Reed is doing all women a big favor.  And thanks should also go to USA Today, and more particularly to America’s sole remaining conservative newspaper The Wall St. Journal for raising awareness sufficiently that the FDA had to look into it.  This is the basis of the connections, i.e., until the doctor and her husband, also a doctor, made a cause out of it the FDA wasn’t aware of it.

Now, why hasn’t the FDA looked into this before now?  Apparently because they have diverted their resources into issuing rules and regulations over the cigar industry.  Their proposed tax on cigars would likely wipe out most of the independent mom and pop cigar stores throughout the U.S.  Even though we know that cigar smokers rarely smoke with the frequency of cigarette smokers, generally don’t inhale and as a result are less likely to get cancer than cigarette smokers, the FDA is hell-bent to put the local cigar shops out of business.  I guess they haven’t noticed- or don’t care-that there are 3.4 million fewer fulltime workers than before the recession and closing mom and pop cigar stores will add to the number.

If you enjoy an occasional cigar, you might want to stock up now.

Say a prayer for Dr. Reed.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Book Review: What Matters Now by Gary Hamel

Interview of Eric Schmidt by Gary Hamel at the MLab dinner tonight. Google's Marissa Mayer and Hal Varian also joined the open dialog about Google's culture and management style, from chaos to arrogance. The video just went up on YouTube. It's quite entertaining. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Cover of The Future of Management My list of must-read business writers continues to expand.   Gary Hamel , however, author of What Matters Now , with the very long subtitle of How to Win in a World of Relentless Change, Ferocious Competition, and Unstoppable Innovation , has been on the list for quite some time.   Continuing his thesis on the need for a new approach to management introduced in his prior book The Future of Management , Hamel calls for a complete rethinking of how enterprises are run. Fundamental to his recommendation is that the practice of management is ossified in a command and control system that is now generations old and needs to be replaced with somethi...
1 comment
Read more

Stimulus Plan

Mr. President: The House stimulus bill is awful. Dangerous. Counter-productive. It has a very high probability of making things worse!. Your man Rahm Emanuel is supposed to be a tough guy: turn him loose on the House Dems - they are selling you down the river. Some simple tests: the spending will improve long-term productivity; the spending will reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and the spending will happen fast; very, very fast. There may need to be some legislation to enable spending without years of environmental review. For example, spending on wind farms would improve long-run productivity and reduce dependence on foreign oil. But let's say the wind farm is a couple of miles offshore. You can't have environmental groups stopping the development to see if some fish will be harmed. This spending has to happen now. And, no tax cuts with the possible exception of AMT. People aren't going to spend any tax savings; they are going to pay their credit card bills or r...
10 comments
Read more

Romney/Thompson dream ticket?

The role of Fred Thompson in yesterday's SC primary is as murky as his next step. Did he divide the religious vote and thereby hand Huckabee a loss? Or would those votes, had he not been there, have gone elsewhere? My instinct is that more of those votes would have gone to Romney or McCain than to Huckabee. Fred comes across to me as the thinking person's conservative: thoughtful on positions, a sense of history, a Federalist, serious about the war on terror and prepared to take the long view on it. His addresses have content, not sound bites - which may, unfortunately, be a drawback in 2008. Mitt is quickly seizing the stage as the most knowledgeable in the field on economics, growth and job creation. With a war still consuming dozens of billions, it isn't clear that the race will be won on voters' views of candidates job creation prowess. However, he gives off as much energy as Fred seems to absorb - Mitt's electron shell could power Fred. So, Mitt may be drawi...
5 comments
Read more