What’s India Missing?
NYT – Water…
…Is painting a bleak picture for the future:
The crisis, decades in the making, has grown as fast as India in recent years. A soaring population, the warp-speed sprawl of cities, and a vast and thirsty farm belt have all put new strains on a feeble, ill-kept public water and sanitation network.
The combination has left water all too scarce in some places, contaminated in others and in cursed surfeit for millions who are flooded each year. Today the problems threaten India’s ability to fortify its sagging farms, sustain its economic growth and make its cities healthy and habitable.
… Is causing fragmentation:
A few years ago, for instance, to compensate for the low water pressure in the public pipeline, Mrs. Prasher and her neighbors began tapping directly into the public water main with so-called booster pumps, each one sucking out as much water as possible.
It was a me-first approach to a limited and unreliable public resource, and it proliferated across this me-first city, each booster pump further draining the water supply.
… And is likely to get worse:
India now uses an estimated 829 billion cubic yards of water every year — that is more than guzzling an entire Lake Erie. But its water needs are growing by leaps. By 2050, official projections indicate, demand will more than double, and exceed the 1.4 trillion cubic yards that India has at its disposal.
$448 Billion For The Pentagon
WaPo – Funding for sustaining current efforts –
The bill, now on its way to the White House for President Bush’s signature, totals $448 billion. It was passed by a 100-0 vote after minimal debate.
The House-Senate compromise bill provides $378 billion for core Pentagon programs, about a 5 percent increase, though slightly less than President Bush asked for. The $70 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan is a down payment on war costs the White House has estimated will hit $110 billion for the budget year beginning Oct. 1.
Federal Regulation Costs $1.127 Trillion
Though published by the Heartland Institute the study is based on previous work by Mark Crain –
To put this number in perspective, budgeted government spending for 2005 was $2.47 trillion, which means hidden regulatory costs are nearly half as much as all on-budget federal spending.
And citizens have no control over the matter due to the system –
In addition to creating huge regulatory costs, agencies continue to increase their sphere of control. Consider this: Congress passed and the president signed into law 161 bills in 2005. Regulatory agencies issued 4,062 rules.That means unelected bureaucrats are doing the bulk of the lawmaking.
and opaqueness –
To find out about regulatory trends and to accumulate information–such as the number of rules produced by each agency, their costs, and their benefits–interested citizens must comb through the Regulatory Plan and Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions–more than 1,000 pages of small multi-column print.
The solution, of course, is transparency. But the elite who are interested in transparent solutions are few and far between.
Ear & Sinus Infection Vaccine
CNN – Assuming it would be able to prevent chronic sinusitus (from which I suffer) this would be great –
The vaccine will target Nontypeable Haemophilus influenzae or NTHi, which is the main remaining cause of ear and sinus infections and bronchitis, now that vaccines exist for various forms of streptococcal bacteria and Haemophilus influenzae B, the previous leading causes.
“For ear infections they are the No. 1 cause, for sinus infections they are the No. 1 cause and for bronchitis in adults they are the No. 1 cause, but they do not invade the bloodstream and cause life-threatening illness in normal people,” Pichichero said in a telephone interview.
Ear infections cost around $3 billion a year alone. Compared to the flu, which costs about about $11 billion, it’s not much, but there is a vaccine for that.
Tidbits
Musharraf will be on The Daily Show tonight. Should be fun to watch.
On a more serious note Robb weighs in on two topics I have recently posted about – Al Suri and Musharraf’s awkward position.