When the article says “Another $600 would go to pandemic influenza research” is that $600 or $600,000 or $600 million? $600 will not buy much these days.

FYI : On Wednesday Jan 28th, 2008 the US dept of Health (HHS) will have its 9th webcast on pandemic plans. Source: http://www.pandemicflu.gov/news/panflu_webinar.html You can email your questions beforehand. The previous eight webcasts are also archived there.

Regards,
Kobie
http://www.newfluwiki2.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/02/opinion/02krugman.html

… Forty years ago the G.O.P. decided, in effect, to make itself the party of racial backlash. And everything that has happened in recent years, from the choice of Mr. Bush as the party’s champion, to the Bush administration’s pervasive incompetence, to the party’s shrinking base, is a consequence of that decision…

Contempt for expertise, in turn, rested on contempt for government in general. “Government is not the solution to our problem,” declared Ronald Reagan. “Government is the problem.” So why worry about governing well?

Where did this hostility to government come from? In 1981 Lee Atwater, the famed Republican political consultant, explained the evolution of the G.O.P.’s “Southern strategy,” which originally focused on opposition to the Voting Rights Act but eventually took a more coded form: “You’re getting so abstract now you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites.” In other words, government is the problem because it takes your money and gives it to Those People.