The Ferguson Forum: 03/27/17

PHOTOS: Fights erupt at pro-Trump rally

Pro-trump participant John Vander Loop reaches in to pull down a sign held by anti-trump protesters as the two sides clash during a pro-trump rally in Huntington Beach, California, U.S., March 25, 2017. REUTERS/Patrick T. Fallon

Pro Trump demonstrators pretend to put hand cuffs on a fellow demonstrator dressed as Hillary Clinton during a beach rally in support of U.S. President Donald Trump in Huntington Beach, California, U.S., March 25, 2017. REUTERS/Patrick T. Fallon

Police detain anti-Trump demonstrators during a pro Trump rally in support of U.S. President Donald Trump at Huntington Beach, California, U.S., March 25, 2017. REUTERS/Patrick T. Fallon

Demonstrators send off white doves from the beach as they protest in support of U.S. President Donald Trump during a rally in Hunginton Beach, California, U.S., March 25, 2017. REUTERS/Patrick Fallon

Demonstrators protest at the beach in support of U.S. President Donald Trump during a rally in Huntington Beach, California, U.S., March 25, 2017. REUTERS/Patrick T. Fallon

Demonstrators send off white doves from the beach as they protest in support of U.S. President Donald Trump during a rally in Huntington Beach, California, U.S., March 25, 2017. REUTERS/Patrick T. Fallon

A pro-Trump rally participant is punched in the face by an anti-Trump protester as the two sides clash at a Pro-Trump rally in Huntington Beach, California, U.S., March 25, 2017. REUTERS/Patrick T. Fallon

Pro-Trump rally participants mix with Anti-Trump protester as the two sides clash during a Pro-Trump rally in Huntington Beach, California, U.S., March 25, 2017. REUTERS/Patrick T. Fallon

Pro-Trump participant John Vander Loop reaches in to pull down a sign held by Anti-Trump protesters as the two sides clash during a Pro-Trump rally in Huntington Beach, California, U.S., March 25, 2017. REUTERS/Patrick T. Fallon

Pro-Trump rally participants grab an Anti-Trump protester as the two sides clash during a Pro-Trump rally in Huntington Beach, California, U.S., March 25, 2017. REUTERS/Patrick T. Fallon

By Patrick T. Fallon

HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. (Reuters) - Supporters of President Donald Trump holding a rally on a popular southern California beach clashed with counter-protesters on Saturday and four people were arrested, law enforcement said.

Multiple fights broke out and at least one Trump supporter was doused with pepper spray when pro-Trump demonstrators marching along Bolsa Chica State Beach encountered a small group opposed to the Republican president who had gathered to denounce the rally.

Four counter-protesters were arrested, three for illegal use of pepper spray and one for assault and battery, Kevin Pearsall, a spokesman for the California State Parks Police said on Saturday evening.

The fights appeared to start in the early afternoon when around a dozen anti-Trump protesters dressed in all black refused to move from a bike path to allow a larger group of pro-Trump supporters taking part in the Make America Great Again rally to pass. The confrontation escalated into a fight with more skirmishes quickly breaking out.

At least one person was pepper-sprayed by an anti-Trump protester, Pearsall said. Park police estimated that 2,000 Trump supporters flocked to the stretch of coastline located south of the ocean-side community of Huntington Beach. Around 20 counter-protesters attended, Pearsall said.

Known as Surf City, U.S.A., Huntington Beach is located some 40 miles (64 km) south of Los Angeles.

Video footage from social media uploaded to the Los Angeles Times' website showed a chaotic scene with men fighting in the sand and a group of around 20 Trump supporters, some carrying Trump flags, chasing a man in a black mask away from the beach and on to a freeway. The man was stopped by members of the California Highway Patrol, the newspaper said.

The masked man had used pepper spray on a female rally organizer and was set upon by a group of Trump supporters, the newspaper reported.

Demonstrations denouncing the Trump administration have drawn hundreds of thousands since he took office in January. Smaller rallies have been staged across the country in support of Trump.

On Saturday, Trump praised his supporters.

"Thanks you for all of the Trump Rallies today. Amazing support. We will all MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!" He said in a message on Twitter.

(Reporting by Patrick T. Fallon; Writing by Timothy Mclaughlin; Editing by Sandra Maler)

Two thirds of cancers caused by random genetic mistakes: U.S. study

By Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO (Reuters) - About two thirds of cancers are caused by random typos in DNA that occur as normal cells make copies of themselves, a finding that helps explain why healthy individuals who do everything they can to avoid cancer are still stricken with the disease, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.

"These cancers will occur no matter how perfect the environment," said Dr. Bert Vogelstein, a cancer geneticist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore whose study was published in the journal Science.

The new findings are based on genetic sequencing and cancer studies from 69 countries around the world. They follow a controversial 2015 study published in Science by the same researchers at Johns Hopkins that looked just at cancers in the United States.

That study, by Vogelstein and mathematician Cristian Tomasetti, asserted that random DNA mistakes accounted for a lot more of the risk of developing cancer than previously thought. The finding caused an outcry from cancer experts, who have traditionally held that most cancers were caused by preventable lifestyle and environmental factors or inherited genetic defects.

Although most people know about the hereditary and environmental causes of cancer, such as smoking, few appreciate the risk from random mistakes that occur each time a normal cell divides and copies its DNA into two new cells, Tomasetti said.

Such mistakes are "a potent source of cancer mutations that historically have been scientifically undervalued," Tomasetti said in a statement.

The new work offers the first estimate of what proportion of cancers are caused by these random mistakes. To get there, the team developed a mathematical model using DNA sequencing data from The Cancer Genome Atlas and disease data from the Cancer Research UK database, looking specifically at mutations that drive aberrant cell growth in 32 different cancer types.

Although there was variation within specific cancers, overall, the researchers estimated that 66 percent of mutations in these cancers resulted from copying errors, 29 percent were caused by lifestyle and environmental factors, and the remaining 5 percent were inherited.

Although most of these mutations cannot be prevented, the team stressed that early detection and treatment can prevent many cancer deaths, regardless of the cause.

Though most cancers are due to bad luck, people should not ignore sound public health advice that can help people avoid preventable cancers, including maintaining a healthy weight and avoiding environmental risk factors such as smoking, the team said.

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen; Editing by Leslie Adler)

Venezuela's Maduro asks UN to help ease medicine shortages

Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro (C) speaks during a meeting with doctors and ministers in Caracas, Venezuela March 15, 2017. Miraflores Palace/Handout

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said on Friday he has asked the United Nations to help the South American nation alleviate medicine shortages, which have become increasingly severe as the oil-producing nation's economic crisis accelerates.

Triple digit inflation and a decaying socialist economic model have left medications ranging from simple anti-inflammatory drugs to chemotherapy medication out of reach for most Venezuelans.

Maduro did not specify the type of aid he requested, although he stressed that the U.N. has knowledge of the pharmaceutical industry.

"I have asked them for support to continue making permanent progress in the regularization of medicines for hospitals," he said.

Maduro earlier on Friday met with Jessica Faieta, Assistant Administrator and Director of the U.N. Development Program, according to state television.

The Venezuelan Pharmaceuticals Federation estimates some 85 percent of drugs are unavailable to the country's citizens.

Maduro often blames the deteriorating economy and widespread shortages of goods on an "economic war" led by opposition politicians with the help of the United States.

Critics say the problems are the result of dysfunctional price and currency controls that have decimated private industry.

(Reporting by Deisy Buitrago, Writing by Brian Ellsworth; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)

4 Ways to Know If An Opportunity Is Worth Your Time

Sometimes life is just a bunch of decisions being thrown your way. We’ve all been presented with opportunities we weren’t sure if we should take. It could be something small, like a university course or an evening networking event. Or it could be something huge, like a risky job at a startup, a chance at a new career path, or even a chance to travel the world.

The decision tree below will help you in those times when you’re not sure if you should take on something new. But, before that, here are 4 principles to deciding if an opportunity is worth your time:

1. When you’re just starting out, do everything.

Derek Sivers tells the story of when he was 18 and just starting out as a musician. His bandmate was offered a gig to play at a pig show which he turned down (because it’s a pig show…) but Derek said yes because it was a paying gig! It only paid $75, which basically broke even after the bus ticket he bought to get out the gig.

The booking agent was impressed and one gig led to another. Eventually, the agent got him into a circus where he worked for the next 10 years. The pig show opportunity was worthless in itself but when you’re just starting out, there’s no opportunity cost! There’s nothing you’re sacrificing to say yes because you’ve got nothing else.

Here’s a piece of advice from Derek:

So I said yes to everything, which is gonna come up later with the “hell yeah or no” thing, but I think it’s a really smart to switch strategies. When you’re earlier in your career I think the best strategy is you just say yes to everything, every piddly little gig, you just never know what are the lottery tickets.”

When you’re just starting out, you’re just looking for the lottery tickets. And to increase your chances of finding one, you’ve got to “buy” as many as possible by taking advantage of every single opportunity.

2. Just do it.

When you know what you want, and you’ve got something standing in your way that you’ve just got to do to continue your journey, just do it. There’s no decision there.

You’re not at a crossroads, you’re on a single path with an obstacle in your way. For example, if you want to be a lawyer, you’ve got to take the LSATs. There’s no decision about whether it’s worth your time, or other things you could be doing to get you closer to achieving your dreams. There’s only the one thing to do, the LSATs, and there’s no getting around that.

3. If you don’t know what you want to do, do everything.

I’ve written about this in an earlier post, Creating Dots: How To Find Ourselves. We figure out what we want to do or be, by doing and being. When you don’t know what to do, you’ll figure it out by going out there and doing everything that life throws your way. Even things you’re hesitant about. Even things that are completely out of your comfort zone. It's the cumulation of those experiences where you’ll learn what you like and don’t like, what’s important to you, and what you want to spend your time doing.

4. Don't close doors.

We change our minds often. Every new experience and every piece of information that we consume shapes us a little bit and sometimes, we just decide that we want something completely different. Remember all those amazing career goals you had in elementary school? You’ve probably changed your mind since then. You may have even changed your mind about what you want from life since a year ago. Knowing that we tend to change our minds and prove ourselves wrong, it’s best to keep as many doors open as possible.

If you’re given the choice between closing a door shut, or keeping it open, always keep it open. Even if you think you’ll never go through it, you never know. Why give it up if you don’t need to?

Reprinted from The Ascent.

Jess Chan

Jess Chan is a digital marketer who is in love with good design. She believes that life is about adding value however you can.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Flashback: Donald Is in Denial about Social Security

In the Republican debate last week, CNN’s Dana Bash pressed the candidates on how they would deal with Social Security. Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz gave solid answers, explaining that the system was headed toward insolvency, suggesting ways to slow spending growth, and scolding candidates who denied the need for cost-saving reforms.

One of the candidates in denial is Donald Trump. He said, “And it’s my absolute intention to leave Social Security the way it is. Not increase the age and to leave it as is.” Trump is a smart man, who presumably understands accounting, so either he hasn’t bothered to examine the finances of the government’s largest program, or he is willfully providing a false narrative about it.

The chart below compares Social Security and defense spending in real 2016 dollars, including Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projections going forward. For decades, the two programs have vied for the title of the government’s largest, but the battle is now over. Social Security spending has soared far above defense spending, and it will keep on soaring without reforms.

Defense is a “normal” program, with spending fluctuating up and down over the years in real, or inflation-adjusted, dollars. But Social Security has taken off like a rocket, and it is consuming more taxpayer resources every year. The government spent the same amount on defense and Social Security in 2008, but it will be spending twice as much on the latter program by 2023.

When the next president enters office in 2017, he will start planning his 2018 budget. In that year, Social Security will become the first trillion-dollar program, and it will be gobbling up an additional $60 billion or so every single year.

Where will all the money come from? Pointing only to “waste, fraud, and abuse,” as Trump does, wastes our time, abuses our intelligence, and is a fraudulent story line to peddle.

Data notes: CBO baseline projections to 2026, then real defense spending assumed fixed after that, while real Social Security spending is assumed to increase at the same rate as CBO projects for 2026 (3.8 percent). For ways to cut Social Security, visit DownsizingGovernment.org, where a version of this post first appeared.

Chris Edwards

Chris Edwards is the director of tax policy studies at Cato and editor of DownsizingGovernment.org.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

5 Tips for the Young and Unemployed

Most of the career advice young people receive today is staggeringly bad. We’re told to take out large amounts of student debt (an average of 35k) to get a degree, apply for jobs at tons of different companies, and spend all our time making sure our resume has the right format.

We’ve spent the last 4 years in school usually accumulating nothing but theory and developing few skills that make us competitive in the job market.

I was lucky enough to avoid most of this. I left college early and never had anyone fill my head with stale career advice. Over the last few years, I’ve figured out a few simple things that will help you land more opportunities than you know what to do with.

Once you know them, your life will change forever. Not only will your standard job be easier to get, you’ll also have more control over the kind of work you do and when, and where you do it.

1. You need a value proposition, not a resume.

Most applicants make the job application process all about them. It’s all about their skills, their interests, their achievements, and their goals. They never ask themselves the only question that matters which is “how can I create value for this employer? What does this employer need to justify hiring me?”

Consider two people who apply to a job. Person A has a resume that lists off his academic achievements, his internships, and some random professional “skills.”

Person B has something different. He spend a few hours thinking through what he wanted to do for the company in question and how he could create value. He put together a one page document outlining a list of deliverables for him to work on during his first 30 days on the job and why he thinks they’ll justify the salary the company is offering.

Who do you think gets the job?

Here’s a simple value proposition template that you can adapt for your own purposes.

2. You should consider working for free.

Most young people are so obsessed with getting a good salary right after they graduate that they price themselves out of the market early. When you’re young and inexperienced though, one of the only things you have to offer competitively in the hiring process is your pay rate.

When I dropped out of college, I figured out that I could get tons of opportunities that would otherwise be closed to me by simply offering to do the job in question for free for the first month or two until I could prove that I was worth paying.

If you’re scared about being exploited, here’s the thing: employers are scared too. They’re terrified of hiring the wrong person because it can cost them tens of thousands of dollars in lost time and expenses and it may be really hard to fire you.

Free work is an easy way to get your foot in the door. Just set a fixed amount of time where you’ll let them get to know and trust you. Once you’ve proven your value, you’ll get paid.

This can pretty much guarantee you an opportunity over other college graduates.

3. You should look outside of college career fairs.

Oftentimes the best opportunities, and incidentally the easiest ones to get, come from businesses that you’d never see doing any traditional recruiting.

The truth is that most companies can’t afford the time and money it costs to recruit on campus. College students get funneled to the same opportunities and those opportunities thus become highly competitive.

You can sidestep all of this by applying to any one of the tens of thousands of small businesses and startups around the country.

The other reason to do this is that, at smaller companies, you’ll often have the chance to get to know the owner and executive team more closely. Interacting with them regularly and seeing how they do their jobs can have a huge payoff in terms of skill development and building a professional network.

4. Choose People, Not Companies

Instead of searching for the most prestigious brand names to apply to, consider instead who you’ll be working with. An opportunity to work with a founder or a CEO of a small unknown company will help you grow much faster than being a compartmentalized cog at a larger firm.

You learn from people, and it’s people who will push you into bigger and better opportunities. When I started my career I was fortunate to work with a number of successful entrepreneurs who played huge roles in my development as a professional. I simply could not have gotten this if I’d taken a standard career path.

5. You don’t need to know what you want to do in life now.

Lastly, don’t stress too much. In all likelihood, your first job will not limit your options later in life. Your goal should be to get real world work experience and to develop transferable skills. That’s it.

The best way to learn what you want to do is to get out and start doing things. Through that process you’ll slowly start to see what interests you and what doesn’t, what you’re good at and what you aren’t good at, and where those two things intersect.

More and more the world is rewarding, not those following a conveyor belt path, but those who jump around and tackle multiple, diverse fields and industries throughout their career.

Want More?

If you found this article valuable and want to learn more, I’m always available to connect. You can find me on Facebook, my blog, and the Praxis website.

Derek Magill

Derek Magill is a college dropout, marketer, business strategist and career expert. He is currently the Director of Marketing at Praxis and has consulted with companies such as Voice & Exit, the Foundation for Economic Education, Glockstore, Colliers International, Daily Caller, and Undertech.
Derek is the author of How to Get Any Job You Want.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Retirement Is Nobody’s Business but Your Own

As someone who works around a lot of economists in Washington, DC, I am privy to a lot of big talk about the problem of retirement policy. The overwhelming consensus among the learned is that Americans, as a group, aren’t saving enough money for retirement, and that if we can gather sufficiently clever people in a room, we can figure out a way to coerce, trick, or otherwise induce workers to be more responsible with their incomes.

I tend to be the odd man out in these meetings: my contribution is generally the radical proposition that we leave people alone and let them make their own choices.

People aren’t saving enough? How absurd. How much is enough, and who comes up with that number? Like most attempts at social engineering, this one appears to only work in one direction. Curious that no one ever laments when someone saves too much, and dies with an unspent fortune. If there is a “correct” amount of saving, than it would be logical to assume that it’s just as possible to exceed it as to fall short, yet it would appear that the “correct” amount of saving has a lower bound, but not an upper one.

The overriding assumption in these talks is that people are irrational and short sighted, and that if they had as much knowledge and intelligence as economists, they would save more. Okay, maybe this is the case for some people (although I agree with Ludwig von Mises that the concept of irrational action is a contradiction in terms), but shouldn’t we stop and consider that people make their financial decisions for a reason?

People Differ

Some people may have short life expectancies, and want to use their money while they can still enjoy it. If a worker expects to die by the age of 65 due to medical conditions or lifestyle choices, can we really call it rational for him to save enough money to sustain a lengthy retirement?

Some people have urgent needs in the present, that outweigh their potential needs in the future. If you have bills to pay today, it’s hard to see how forcing you to pay into a retirement account at the expense of making a mortgage payment or keeping up with the electric bills would make you better off.

Some people expect to make much more money in the future than they do now, and choose to defer their retirement savings for when they will be able to afford it.

Some people simply prefer present consumption to future consumption, and that is their right. Time preferences are personal, and no one can say that there is anything wrong with prioritizing the present over the future, whatever the reason may be.

Now, to be fair, much of the concern over retirement policy arises due to the fact that in our current system, taxpayers are frequently compelled to bear the burden of those who fail to adequately plan for their old age. This is indeed an injustice, but pointing that out is not an indictment of individual decision-making, but rather of a system that forces some people to pay for other people’s choices.

Instead of trying to control what workers do with their own money, it would make far more sense to make individuals bear the costs of their own actions, which would have the additional effect of increasing the incentives for saving. When you know that the government isn’t going to bail you out, you tend to be a little more cautious in how you manage your money.

I have a radical idea for retirement policy. Let’s allow people to keep their own money, make their own decisions, and get government out of the business of telling people how to save. After all, your retirement should be nobody’s business but your own.

Logan Albright

Logan Albright is the Director of Research at Free the People. Logan was the Senior Research Analyst at FreedomWorks, and was responsible for producing a wide variety of written content, research for staff media appearances, and scripts for video production. Logan also managed the research and interviews with congressional candidates used for endorsements by FreedomWorks PAC. He received his Master’s degree in economics from Georgia State University in 2011, before promptly setting out for DC to fight for liberty.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

One Bill Could Massively Improve Access to Lifesaving Drugs

Senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) have just introduced a bill that would implement an idea that I have long championed: making drugs, devices, and biologics that are approved in other developed countries also approved for sale in the United States.

Highlights of the “Reciprocity Ensures Streamlined Use of Lifesaving Treatments Act (S. 2388), or the RESULT Act,” include:

Amending the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act to allow for reciprocal approval of drugs, devices and biologics from foreign sponsors in certain trusted, developed countries including EU member countries, Israel, Australia, Canada and Japan.
Encouraging the FDA to expeditiously review life-saving drug and device applications, this legislation would provide the FDA with a 30-day window to approve or deny a sponsor’s application….
The HHS Secretary is instructed to approve a drug, device or biologic if the FDA confirms the product is:
- Lawfully approved for sale in one of the listed countries;
- Not a banned device by current FDA standards;
- There is a public health or unmet medical need for the product.
If a promising application for a life-saving drug is declined Congress is granted the authority to disapprove of a denied application and override an FDA decision with a majority vote via a joint resolution.

In explaining why he introduced the bill, Senator Cruz argued:

We continue to lose far too many of our loved ones to the “invisible graveyard,” as economist Alex Tabarrok has described: lives that could have been saved but for a bureaucratic barrier that rejects medical cures and innovation…

The bill I am introducing takes the first step to reverse this trend. It provides for reciprocal drug approval, so that cures and medical devices that are already approved in other countries can more expeditiously come to the U.S.

This post first appeared at Marginal Revolution.

Alex Tabarrok

Alex Tabarrok is a professor of economics at George Mason University. He blogs at Marginal Revolution with Tyler Cowen.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.