Author Archive: Glenn Reynolds

February 3, 2025

VINAY PRASAD: Randomize NIH grant giving.

You submit your grant and they hire someone to handle your section. They find three people to review it. Ideally, they pick people who have no idea what you are doing or why it is important, and are not as successful as you, so they can hate read your proposal. If, despite that, they give you a good score, you might be discussed at study section.

The study section assembles scientists to discuss your grant. As kids who were picked last in kindergarten basketball, they focus on the minutiae. They love to nitpick small things. If someone on study section doesn’t like you, they can tank you. In contrast, if someone loves you, they can’t really single handedly fund you.

You might wonder if study section leaders are the best scientists. Rest assured. They aren’t. They are typically mid career, mediocre scientists. (This is not just a joke, data support this claim see www.drvinayprasad.com). They rarely have written extremely influential papers. . . .

Given that the current system is onerous and likely flawed, you would imagine that NIH leadership has repeatedly tested whether the current method is superior than say a modified lottery, aka having an initial screen and then randomly giving out the money.

Of course not. Self important people giving out someone else’s money rarely study their own processes. If study sections are no better than lottery, that would mean a lot of NIH study section officers would no longer need to work hard from home half the day, freeing up money for one more grant.

Given that the purpose of a system is what it does, the purpose of the NIH is to centralize control of scientific research under a federal bureaucracy, not to produce the best or most innovative science.

Posted at 8:00 am by Glenn Reynolds on Feb 3rd, 2025

JEFFREY CARTER: The Tariff Game. “Every Democrat took to X and said, Trump campaigned on ending inflation but tariffs are going to increase inflation. I knew Democrats couldn’t grasp economic concepts before, but now they are full-throated in their ignorance.”

Plus: “The way $DOGE is working, they are uncovering billions and billions of government largesse and waste. We will see budget cuts in the 20% of the budget that is discretionary. Interestingly, if we spent at 2019 levels and took in taxes as we did in 2023, the US Budget would be in surplus and we’d be paying debt down. Ending 100% of all payments to NGOs is a fantastic idea. We will save trillions. . . . Trump is getting a lot of stuff done that people in the US have wanted en masse for years. Who hasn’t heard a liberal or a conservative say they want good government? Who hasn’t heard someone say they want to eliminate waste? All the crying you hear today is from people actually seeing waste get eliminated.”

But read the whole thing.

Posted at 7:39 am by Glenn Reynolds on Feb 3rd, 2025

NGOs AS MONEY LAUNDRIES:

Posted at 7:30 am by Glenn Reynolds on Feb 3rd, 2025

February 2, 2025

YEP. LEFTY POLITICS LIVES ON A STANDING WAVE OF OTHER PEOPLE’S ILL-OBTAINED MONEY. Democratic States Are Wards of Washington: There’s a reason for the panic over the Trump White House’s temporary federal spending pause.

Democratic states and their economies depend much more on Washington largesse than Republican states do. This year, New York received roughly $4,900 per capita from the feds and California $4,300—two to three times as much as Florida ($1,700) and Texas ($1,500). That’s because Democratic states provide more generous social welfare, which is increasingly funded by Washington thanks to regulatory changes by the Biden administration.

Democratic states also received a disproportionate share of the more than $1 trillion that Congress sent to state and local governments in 2020 and 2021 as pandemic relief. Between 2018 and 2022, federal dollars flowing to state and local governments increased by about $515 billion, more than the rise in Social Security and Medicare combined.

Most Covid funds are running out, though the Biden Federal Emergency Management Agency planned to hand out disaster-relief funds to states and cities for pandemic “emergency” spending through August 2026. This year’s Los Angeles city budget includes $208.2 million in FEMA Covid funds, including for housing vagrants in hotels. New York state’s budget this year includes nearly $3.5 billion in FEMA dollars for Covid “emergency protective measures” such as home test kits.

After blowing through federal pandemic largesse, states and localities are tapping FEMA to backfill their budgets. Congress, in turn, keeps backfilling FEMA. Rinse and repeat.

The Government Accountability Office last summer projected that the Covid “disaster” will be the most expensive in FEMA history. President Trump is right to call for shifting more FEMA responsibilities to states. Federal spending on disaster relief creates a moral hazard by reducing the incentive for states to invest in disaster preparation and mitigation.

The same goes for social welfare. States have less incentive to help lift people out of poverty since they receive more federal dollars if people stay poor. When you’re spending someone else’s cash, there’s hardly an incentive to spend it prudently. Medicaid, states’ biggest source of federal dollars, encourages inefficient spending.

States receive $1 to $3 from Washington for every dollar they spend on Medicaid—and $9 for lower-income able-bodied individuals covered under the ObamaCare expansion. Democratic states provide more-expansive benefits and easier eligibility to wring more money out of Washington. Some 36% of Californians are covered by Medicaid, compared with 19% of Floridians and 15% of Texans. The federal share of the Golden State’s Medicaid spending—nearly $120 billion—is more than Florida’s entire budget.

America’s welfare queen is New York. Federal dollars make up roughly 40% of the state’s budget.

Stop subsidizing them.

Posted at 10:16 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Feb 2nd, 2025

OPEN THREAD: Ring out the weekend.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Feb 2nd, 2025

LIZ WARREN NOT ONLY WASN’T THE BRIGHTEST OF LAW PROFESSORS, SHE’S NOT EVEN VERY BRIGHT FOR A SENATOR:

Posted at 9:03 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Feb 2nd, 2025

HMM:

UPDATE:

Posted at 8:51 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Feb 2nd, 2025

TRUMP IS A GENIUS, PAYING THESE PEOPLE TO BOOST PUBLIC SUPPORT FOR HIS DEPORTATIONS:

Posted at 7:51 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Feb 2nd, 2025

TO BE FAIR, I’M HAPPY WITH HIM BEING OUT OF THE GENE POOL:

Posted at 7:08 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Feb 2nd, 2025

SO MAKE ONE.

Posted at 6:25 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Feb 2nd, 2025
« Previous Entries
Next Entries »