ABOUT THIS BLOG

I shall post videos, graphs, news stories, and other material there. We shall use some of this material in class, and you may review the rest at your convenience. You will all receive invitations to post to the blog. (Please let me know if you do not get such an invitation.) I encourage you to use the blog in these ways:
To post questions or comments about the readings before we discuss them in class;
To follow up on class discussions with additional comments or questions.
To post relevant news items or videos.

There are only two major limitations: no coarse language, and no derogatory comments about people at the Claremont Colleges.


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Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Congess and Flu

As we discussed yesterday, it did not take long for Congress to seize the issue. From Roll Call:

Congress rushed to respond Monday to the swine flu outbreak as the death toll south of the border mounted, the Obama administration urged Americans to avoid travel to Mexico, and fears of a worldwide pandemic grew. Lawmakers were taking another look at pandemic flu funding after the Senate sliced an $870 million item from the stimulus package in February, and committees announced flu hearings for Wednesday and Thursday. Democratic appropriators said they will try to include flu funding in the upcoming war supplemental, after Senate Republicans led by Sen. Susan Collins (Maine) blocked the money in February. Some lawmakers charged the funding was pork, and others — like Collins — deemed it an unnecessary expenditure for the economic recovery plan. Collins defended her role, with her spokesman Kevin Kelley saying in a statement Monday that she supports increasing funding for pandemic flu even though she helped nix it from the stimulus.

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