Facts For You To Know

5/30/26                      

California has the 4th largest economy in the world, behind the US, China, and Japan.  Last year, California grew at a faster rate than the US itself - 3.2% vs. 2.8%.  Furthermore, Santa Barbara and its tri-county neighbors all grew faster than California.  Santa Barbara County’s real GDP rose 4.4% in 2024, slightly behind San Luis Obispo County’s rate of 4.6% rate, but ahead of Ventura County’s 3.6% rate.

Unfortunately, there is a flip side to this apparent prosperity.  Santa Barbara is increasingly unaffordable for most of its residents, as described in a previous posting.

Poor Santa Barbara Poor                         4/17/26

The Santa Barbara Independent reports that among the 58 counties in California, Santa Barbara ranks worst when it comes to child poverty.  One out of every five children falls below the federal poverty line. When it comes to overall poverty, we’re number two.  These poorest-of-the-poor county residents now face the possibility of losing food stamps and medical care, so that Trump and his oligarch buddies can further prosper.

About 58,000 county residents - 33,000 households - rely on food stamps, which are increasingly harder to qualify for.

5/27/26

5/25/26

The median home price in San Francisco, as of March, was $2.15 million, up nearly 18% from last year, thanks to an artificial intelligence tech boom and hiring surge in the Bay Area.

AARP reports that the average American homeowner spends $25,000 annually on home expenses.

Poor dental health has been linked to heart disease, stroke, complications from diabetes, respiratory infections, worsening rheumatoid arthritis, and frailty.  In rare cases, germs from the mouth can travel and infect the inner lining of the heart. Scientists believe chronic inflammation in the mouth may increase Alzheimer’s risk, just as it increases cardiovascular risk, by driving the inflammation system-wide over time.

5/24/26

A new financial filing shows that in the first quarter of 2026, Trump or his investment advisers made more than 3,700 trades - over 40 a day – totalling tens of millions of dollars and involving major companies that have dealings with his administration.  Trump would purchase a stock and then brazenly recommend it to the public.

Of the more than 400,000 people currently incarcerated by immigration authorities, even the ultraconservative Cato Institute admits that only 7% have any criminal record.  Furthermore, these incarcerations have resulted in more than 100,000 family separations, involving children who are mostly US citizens.

5/23/26

5/22/26

5/20/26

Sepsis is a deadly condition that occurs when the body’s immune system overreacts to an infection, damaging tissues and organs. In 2017, there were an estimated 49 million cases of sepsis worldwide.  One meta-analysis found that 32% of people with sepsis die within 90 days, rising to 39% for those with septic shock.  But a novel approach that filters out a driver of this process would stop sepsis in its tracks.

A protein called galectin-3 has many functions in healthy people, which led researchers to wonder if it might contribute to sepsis.  Accordingly, they developed a device to filter galectin-3 from a patient’s blood, process the blood to remove the galectin-3, and process the blood plasma before transfusing it back into the patient.

5/19/26

Before the measles vaccine was introduced in 1963, the virus was the leading cause of childhood mortality. Nearly everyone contracted the disease, resulting in annual death tolls of about 2.6 million people globally.  With the introduction of the vaccine, infections declined to the point where measles was officially declared eliminated in the US in 2000.

Since then, with the rise of the Antivaxxers and with RFK Jr. as our chief health officer, measles has rebounded in the US and is becoming stubbornly entrenched. RFK Jr. recommended against taking the MMR vaccine because a 1998 study published in The Lancet associated it with autism. However, this study has been retracted due to data fabrication and other issues.

Everybody, don’t be stupid. Get all your vaccines.

Veggie Rescue is a local Santa Barbara County nonprofit with a straightforward mission – to collect surplus food from county growers, farmers' markets, food distributors, and grocery stores and reroute it to people who need it, which they do exceedingly well on a mammoth scale. Last year, they collected  744,000 pounds of food, which was rerouted to 73 nonprofits throughout the county.

5/16/26

Last December in Boston, immigrants were pulled out of line during a naturalization ceremony, moments before taking the oath that would have christened them as U.S. citizens. Pretty shitty. Now, a group of 14 green card holders has sued the Trump administration in Federal Court.

More than 7 million Student loan borrowers, who had been enrolled in a Biden-era income- based repayment plan, have been notified that beginning July 1 they will have 90 days to get into a new plan or be routed into another one by the government.  One wonders how many of them were conned into entering Trump University.

The 988 national suicide prevention hotline was rolled out in July 2022.  As of December 2024, it was found that there were 4,372 fewer suicides among adolescents and young adults than had been projected.

In the London marathon on April 26, Kenya’s Sabastian Sawe became the first person to run an official marathon in under 2 hours.  His time was 1:59:30. Remarkably, another runner from Ethiopia in the marathon also broke the 2-hour harrier, but was 11 seconds behind Sawe

About 95% of the prisoners in the US correctional system rejoin society after serving an average of about three years.

5/15/26

Despite their best efforts, most Americans approaching retirement age are woefully unprepared financially.  Few have had incomes large enough to set aside savings for retirement and will have to rely on Social Security, which will be unable to provide full benefits in a few years. What to do?

Suppose our government placed $5,000 in a retirement trust account for every child born in America on its first birthday. These accounts would be held and managed by the government for the express purpose of providing for the children in their retirement years. Upon each recipient's death, any funds in the account would revert to the government. Since about 3.6 million children reached age 1 in the US last year, this program would cost only about $18 billion yearly, a trivial amount in the US economy.

Assuming a retirement age of 66, each $5,000 retirement account would have a 65-year investment period. Since 1900, which includes the Great Depression, the US stock market has provided a remarkably consistent average annual real return of 6.8%, above inflation. Since World War II, the inflation-adjusted average annual total return has risen to 7.2 percent.  For this analysis, let’s assume a real return of 7% annually going forward.

At that 7% rate of return, each $5,000 account would have the buying power of about $407,000 at retirement age. Converted to an annuity, it would provide a very comfortable retirement income of about $30,000 yearly for the recipient. (Coincidentally, that is more than I now receive after retiring at age 70.)

5/06/26

Trump is hoping (dreaming?) to spend $1.5 trillion on defense next year, roughly 42% more than the US spends now.  With a bigger budget than the next 9 countries combined, the US already has the most expensive armed forces in the world.  In terms of sheer active personnel numbers, America ranks third behind China and India.  In addition, the cost of the conflict with Iran is not included in the current defense costs, which some estimate could total an additional one trillion dollars.

To help offset spending in the current military budget, Trump has already made deep cuts in nondefense programs across the Federal government, including affordable housing, education, job training, and medical research.

4/27/26

Cancer deaths often occur long after tumor cells have migrated from their original location in the body.  What triggers these cells to proliferate is unclear, but prior studies suggest that when cancer cells reach the lungs, inflammation caused by a respiratory viral infection may trigger proliferation.

To test this hypothesis, a research team at the University of Colorado used mice genetically engineered to grow tumors in their mammary glands.  They injected half of the mice with the H1N1 version of the flu, also known as swine flu.  Nine days post-infection, the number of cancer cells in their lungs had increased 100-fold.  When they repeated the experiment with SARS-CoV-2, they observed a roughly 10-fold increase in cancer cells.

The researchers hypothesized that viral infections increase levels of an inflammatory molecule called IL-6, which helps the immune system destroy viruses, but can promote tumor growth.  To validate that result, they repeated the experiment in mice genetically engineered to lack IL-6 and found substantially fewer cancer cells in their lungs.