The latest breakthrough in cancer treatment could prove to be “the cure” that kills it all, including a $50 billion-a-year industry. Dr. Carl June and his team at The University of Pennsylvania Medical Center have discovered a fresh, yet promising procedure that has leukemia patients marveling and pharmaceutical companies weary.

On August 10, 2011, the New England Journal of Medicine announced that the Alliance of Cancer Gene Therapy funded a clinical trial performed on three patients with the most common type of blood disease, chronic lymphocytic leukemia. The innovation that genetically alters T-cells and infuses them back into the body after chemotherapy has astonishingly decimated over six pounds of cancer in 28 days. All three terminally ill subjects have been in remission for over 10 months with two of the three having no trace of malignant cells, and the other with 75 percent shrinkage in the tumor.

According to the National Cancer Institute, the U.S. alone averages 15,000 new cases of leukemia every year, killing 4,300. The only treatment available is to undergo chemotherapy and radiation to stall the disease, and life-threatening bone marrow transplants to aid in remission. Dr. June said in a telephone interview with Bloomberg, “This is like a bone marrow transplant where the patient is the donor…this might make treatment more widely available with less long-term toxicity.”

His new procedure takes a small sample of the patient’s own T-cells extracted from their blood, and genetically modifies them to recognize cancer cells. They are then mixed with genetically harvested T-cells that have a similar coding to the HIV virus in the sense that they multiply 1000 fold when infused back into the body. Four days after chemotherapy, when the white blood cells are at their lowest and weakest points, the new genetically altered T-cells are given in one dose for three days, and act as replacement “serial killing” cells. Dr. June said of the research, “the results exceeded our expectations quite a bit.” Oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Dr. David Steensma, who wasn’t involved in the study said, “[the army of T-cells] not only has attacked and cleared the field but it’s also set up a patrol to make sure the enemy doesn’t come back.”

So if a potential cure has been found, then why is there a lack of funding for further research and clinical trials? Both the pharmaceutical industry and the government’s National Institute of Health have denied financing this project and many others in the past. An ongoing battle since the 1970s has prevented a cure from obliterating not only a life altering disease, but also that of a lucrative cancer industry.

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With a finite – and as far as most Democrats are concerned, insufficient – supply of taxpayer funds out there, its always interesting to see the choices that politicians with the power to spend the money make.

Take Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway, for example. Yes, that Jack Conway, of ‘Aqua Budda’ fame. Conway has been on the warpath against for-profit colleges, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer funds to mount an investigation against seven academic institutions in the state.

Conway’s investigation recently got a big break. The smoking gun?  Owensboro-based Daymar College seems to have overcharged students for textbooks. That’s right; apparently Daymar encouraged students to purchase textbooks in the college bookstore even though they were available more cheaply through other retailers.

For anyone who has been to college this quarter-century, the textbook charges are laughable. Every school, from community colleges all the way up to the ritziest private universities, tries to snooker students into buying their textbooks at the bookstore then they could easily get them for less on Amazon.com.

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Francis Cianfrocca and Ben Domenech talk about Rick Perry’s comments on the Fed, and Florida’s Adam Hasner talks about his run for the Senate.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

Perry Doubles Down on Fed: Open Up and Be Transparent
GOP Field Launches Sharp Attacks on the Fed
Florida Senate Race Heats Up Early
Adam Hasner Speaks at Redstate
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Seems Rep. Maxine Waters let her private frustrations with President Obama boil over publicly at the recent “For the People” Jobs Initiative forum in Detroit

Rep. Waters has a hard time dealing with reality.

Rep. Waters politely chastised President Obama for not including majority Black Communities on his, “jobs bus tour,” of the Mid-West recently. Water’s went on to publicly admit that she and her fellow Congressional Black Caucus(CBC) Members were/are tired of making excuses for the President within the Black Community, but then admitted that they don’t put pressure on the President because he is beloved in the same community and they don’t want either he or the community coming after them.

I say to Rep. Waters, “if those excuses actually sleep at night, then so be it,” but in reality, President Obama and his handlers know full well that he will receive over 90% of the Black Vote in 2012, no matter how bad things get for the community.

What is really upsetting to Rep. Waters is in reality that she and her fellow CBC members are feeling the heat from some even more Leftist activists within the Black Community, who are asking, “Where is the political payback for once again delivering over 90% of the Black Vote for Democrat Candidates in 2010 and why won’t this President take our calls, let alone be seen in public with us?

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For a man who once said “typical white person” during a radio interview to describe his grandmother’s actions toward a black man who kept bugging her at a bus stop, his words of advice to Perry seem comical. Or his overt disdain for middle-America and their archaic tendencies to “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them.”

“I certainly think threatening the Fed chairman is not a good idea,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

“When you are president or running for president, you have to think about your words,” Carney said in Iowa, where Obama was on a campaign-style bus tour.

I also distinctly remember President Obama telling his buddies to bring a gun if they (the opposition) bring a knife to the fight, and to go out and “get in people’s faces.” What about when he told a crowd of Mexican and Latino voters that they should work with him so that they both could “punish their enemies” (again the opposition).

However one views Perry’s comments toward the Fed Chairman is their concern. In fact, a fellow Texan, and GOP colleague, disagreed with his “treasonous” comment. Karl Rove said Perry made a mistake and his remark was not presidential. I’m sure you will hear many more comments like that. I suspect he has already received several phone calls from concerned supporters telling him to be more selective with his language.

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It turns out that health policy under President Obama is just wrong-headed, it’s also corrupt. The Obama administration is now allowing left wing health care companies to shape policy in exchange for big campaign donations.

The Washington Examiner’s Lachlan Markay broke news this week about the appointment of a major liberal donor, Judith Faulkner, CEO of Epic Systems Corporation, to the Health & Human Services Health Information Technology Policy Committee. Markay reports that Judy Faulkner was appointed to a stimulus-created board that is charged with disbursing billions of taxpayer dollars for health information technology adoption despite her opposition to the administration’s interoperability goals, which require that health records be shareable across platforms.

Faulkner and her company oppose the president’s vision for health IT, but Epic employees are massive Democratic donors. They’ve given nearly $300,000 to Democrats since 2006, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Faulkner is also the sole representative for the health IT industry on the committee, which has the power to set industry standards. Does anyone doubt that any adopted standards will work to the benefit of Epic Systems? This is a serious conflict of interest for Epic Systems and the Department of Health and Human Services. It is, however, a fairly predictable conflict of interest, highlighting one of the myriad objections to central planning known as regulatory capture. Simply put, regulatory capture is when government agencies work in the interest of specific commercial interests instead of their original charter, and is extremely common due to the fact that industry has the strongest incentive to assume control of the regulatory process. Given this, why should Americans trust any decision made by HHS on Health IT policy?

Sadly, that’s not all there is to the story.

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Today, in 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, guaranteeing women the right to vote.

Despite failing to win a Democratic Majority in the Wisocnsin State Senate, the pulbic employee unions are continuing their rhetorical battle, including in the email boxes of state employees. Clearly unions are in panic mode now that their hope at winning legislative control here at the ballot box has been dashed.

[Madison, Wisc..] Just because state employees can no longer be forced to be members of public employee unions doesn’t mean the unions will refrain from contacting them using their government emails.

Thousands of Wisconsin state employees were met with a highly political email from their union when they came to work Wednesday morning.

“Walker thinks he can cripple our union by making payroll deduction for union dues illegal,” the email solicitation, sent by AFT-Wisconsin Communications Representative Jill Bakken, began. “By re-committing to our union, we are standing strong and sending a message: Walker doesn’t decide whether we have a voice – we do.”

AFT-Wisconsin is a labor union that had 17,000 public employees in the state of as members before the recent labor reforms became law.

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Today, Missouri’s Lt. Governor Peter Kinder called into The Dana Show to talk about his involvement in the lawsuit he filed on behalf of Missourians to block the implementation of Obamacare in our state and to respond to completely ridiculous claims made by Tammy Chapman, former stripper and Penthouse “Pet of the Month” from the early ’90s.

In the non-story, promoted by the non-journalists at the local alternative rag, Chapman made the claim that Lt. Governor Kinder pursued a relationship with her and “stalked” her while she was a stripper. In fact, she goes so far as to say he made her feel uncomfortable by continuing to visit the establishment and “ogling” her once she made it clear she didn’t want a relationship. I’m curious, did she also shout out from the stage to all the other men who would have liked to pursue a relationship with her that they too should stop ogling her while she was taking her clothes off? How rude of those men, there to look at naked women, ogling her! She goes on to say when Kinder happened into the bar 16 YEARS LATER, where she was then working (where the waitresses are sometimes serving drinks in their panties) she was so creeped out by him, she asked him if he remembered her, took a smiling picture voluntarily with him and told him she was looking for a place to live. Chapman makes the totally unsubstantiated and highly unlikely claim that Kinder offered her a room at his campaign funded condo-where he spends almost no time.

The most ridiculous part of this story is……well, basically the entire story. If they were going to write this article they should have titled it “Single Heterosexual Male Visits Strip Club, Pursues Woman Who Isn’t Interested.”

Ms. Chapman is quoted as saying “He uses his political business card to get women, he is not fit for public office.” So, we have come to a point in the political discussion where single politicians shouldn’t date or even attempt to date. They should not hand their business cards out and they should not be interested in finding or having a relationship of any kind. Because she says he found her attractive 16 years ago and might have tried to pursue her, makes him fully and completely unfit for office. Frankly, I find no evidence what-so-ever that he was a repeat visitor to said strip club OR that he had any interest in her at all. Pathetic.

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With Texas Governor Rick Perry now leading the race for the Republican nomination for President, only days after jumping into contest (according to Rasmussen Reports – full disclosure, I have endorsed Perry) – we can expect a withering response from President Obama and his allies on the left.  As John Podhoretz noted in Commentary, comparing Perry to Ronald Reagan, “The conservative boogeyman is back.”

Since the Republican Party’s natural constituency is conservative, more so in this tumultuous Tea Party era, most attacks on Perry will be from the right – the attacks from the left will come after Perry wins the nomination.  That the machinery of the left will aid in the early attacks from the right is a given; it’s all part of winning for them.
The Trans-Texas Corridor is one such emerging line of criticism against Gov. Perry.  First proposed by Perry in 2002, the north-south running road would have also included a railway, petroleum pipeline, power lines, and communications cables.

Some conservatives have linked the planned Texas road with the feared, but as yet theoretical, North American Union or NAU and NAFTA, dubbing it the NAFTA Super Highway.  That Perry would have proposed such a thing is yet more proof to them that Perry is somehow the “Establishment” candidate (never mind his comments about the Fed, the Tenth Amendment, and the fact that the same “Establishment” ran Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison against him for governor last year).

So, what’s the deal with Perry’s proposed superhighway and should conservatives be worried?

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If you needed any more evidence of the level of corruption that exists inside the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) when it comes to enforcing civil rights statutes, here it is.

On March 15, 2011, civil rights activist Ted Hayes testified, by invitation, before the Judiciary Committee of the Maryland House of Delegates, against providing taxpayer dollars for in-state tuition benefits for illegal aliens. Shortly after his testimony, Mr. Hayes was subjected to vicious retribution by a radical Hispanic group known as “The Timmytop,” which posted a hate video on a YouTube channel that included racist smears and death threats.

The video begins with the message “[expletive] you ‘Mayate,’” which is reportedly a racist and derogatory term used to smear African-Americans and “dark skinned” people. The video then streams a series of racist images including: The silhouette of a man hanging from a noose; photos of Mr. Hayes adjacent to photos of monkeys and bananas; and doctored photos of Mr. Hayes pictured with a gun next to his head. The video, which runs two minutes and nine seconds, concludes with the message “Your [sic] FREE Now Mayate go back to Africa.”

The video has since been removed from its original placement on YouTube, but it is available on Judicial Watch’s website here. (If you choose to watch it, please be warned that it is extremely offensive and unfit for young eyes.)

You might think that this type of vile behavior would earn the interest of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division. (That’s what we thought, too.) After all, this is the division at the DOJ that is responsible for investigating and prosecuting violations of civil rights, including, and perhaps especially, those that could have a chilling effect on the First Amendment. In this case, you have the intimidation of a witness through death threats and humiliation.

Judicial Watch filed a complaint with the DOJ regarding the matter on April 28, 2011, calling for a full investigation. And recently we received a response directly from the office of Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez (of Black Panther scandal fame). It was short and sweet:

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Hall of Fame ceremonies are reserved for those people who stand out from the masses, whether it is football, country music or rock and roll.  However the latest inductions into a new kind of Hall of Fame are those who hand out unemployment insurance checks.

Yes, now no one can say President Obama hasn’t done anything about unemployment—he is allowing those bureaucrats who sign the checks to be recognized for their work.

In 2010, the unemployment insurance (UI) program celebrated its 75^th anniversary.  To commemorate, a new awards ceremony was introduced.  The Department of Labor (DOL) established the UI Innovation Awards and the UI Hall of Fame to recognize the outstanding work of individuals and state UI agencies.

The 2011 awards ceremony will be held Oct. 17-20 at the Biltmore Hotel in Providence, R.I.  The going rate for a junior suite with two king-sized beds during the convention is $119 a night, not too bad.   Of course since this is a federal government department, you can assume your tax dollars are paying for the convention as well as probably contributing to the UI Hall of Fame celebration.

A request of the budget for this convention from the organizer of the awards ceremonies at the Department of Labor went unanswered.  Americans for Limited Government (ALG) is currently working on a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to find out the cost to taxpayers for this event.

To nominate a person for the UI Hall of Fame, whether dead or alive, one of more of the following achievements must have occurred (as reported from the DOL’s information on the award):

1. Promoting Legislation or Public Policy

Nominee has made important contributions to the achievement of significant Federal legislation or public policies that have improved and strengthened the Unemployment Insurance program.

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I’ve already written on the Left’s special plan for Rick Perry. No need to go into it here but in case you missed them:

• Perry Should Have a Plan against Southern Bigotry
• Remember When I said Perry Should Have a Plan?

So why are they doing it? Just know that he is an insufferable candidate: Texan, Southern, with an accent. Most grievous to their sensibilities is that he is running against President Obama. Surely the only motive to this is that he is clearly a racist. I mean why else would he be running, right?

The media doesn’t have time for Perry to come right out and say he is a neo-confederate racist, so they took the liberty of speeding things along until that time comes, courtesy of Ed Shultz. (Larry O’Connor for Breitbart.tv)

Of course, they had to get creative with the editing of Perry’s speech. For MSNBC viewers, I’m sure it went over well. To the rest of us, it was criminal, especially considering that the video clip was so altered it resembled nothing of the original meaning and content of the governor’s speech.

If you look closely at that video, you’ll notice that the sound ends after Perry says, “That big black cloud that hangs over America,” but he’s still speaking.

Want to know what he said that Schultz and MSNBC intentionally cut out?

“That big black cloud that hangs over America, that debt that is so monstrous.”

Perry wasn’t suggesting, implying, or “inferring” that the “big black cloud that hangs over America” is President Obama.

He clearly – both before the phrase “big black cloud” and after – said he was speaking about America’s debt.

Yet Schultz and his staff edited Perry in mid-sentence to make it appear the Texas governor was making a racist remark about Obama.

In any other industry in this nation, such intentionally dishonest and misleading behavior would be met with the harshest of consequences. (News Busters)

UPDATE!!

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Big Government has pointed to the many holes in the story behind Tammy Chapman’s bizarre allegations targeted at prospective Republican gubernatorial candidate, Missouri Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder -  Exclusive: Sex Smear Targeting Kinder Doesn’t Survive Scrutiny.

We’ve also looked at accuser Tammy Chapman’s inability to keep her story straight:  Kinder Accuser Tammy Chapman Can’t Keep Story Straight.

Chapman’s long-time association with Democrat John Ross, his links to the attempted smear, as well as a media outlet involved, put Ross right in the middle of the bizarre effort to push allegations from 16 years ago. He’s also involved in the disappearance of her cell phone, effectively wiping out any evidence that could get to the bottom of the story.

John Ross is a Democrat, he ran for US Congress against Jim Talent in 1998 in the St. Louis area. Ross has been friends with Tammy Chapman since 2004. He has a tell-all story of his friendship w/ Chapman here. There is also a YouTube video where he sings to her about vulgar things he wants to do to her.

Chapman has claimed she went to a St. Louis NRA event in 2007 and told a friend the story, claiming Kinder was “creepy” in 2007. That friend was John Ross. They are pictured together at the event here. That’s when Chapman saw Kinder, and (from the RFT penthouse article) pointed him out to Ross. (quote from article.”[Chapman] saw him four years ago at an NRA convention: Their eyes locked, and Chapman confided to a companion that this was the creepy guy she’d told him about. But the two never spoke.”).

That matters because one year later, in 2008, during Kinder’s Lieutenant Governor campaign, Democrats start carrying posters w/ pics of Chapman saying “Who is this woman?” at events including speaking events in Missouri. The same photos used on those posters are displayed on Ross’ website. As previously reported, nothing came of the story, evidently the media realized there was nothing to it. Fast forward to this year, as Kinder prepares to run for Governor.

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Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack has officially joined a prestigious list of Democrat economic geniuses that believe entitlement programs stimulate the economy.

First there was Nancy Pelosi who said, “Now, let me say about unemployment insurance…this is one of the biggest stimuluses [sic] to our economy. Economists will tell you this money is spent quickly. It injects demand into the economy, and is job creating.”

Excuse me Nancy, isn’t cash obtained in a liquor store heist also spent quickly, and couldn’t theft be considered a job creator for cops, the courts, and prison personnel?

Even still, Mrs. Pelosi contends unemployment insurance “creates jobs faster than almost any other initiative you can name because, again, it is money that is needed for families to survive, and it is spent. So it has a double benefit. It helps those who have lost their jobs, but it also is a job creator.”

President Obama, the man who has also proven to be a fiscal whiz kid, concurs with Pelosi that the extension of unemployment benefits is “good for the entire economy.”  Obama said “It’s probably the biggest boost that we can give an economy because those folks are most likely to spend the money with businesses, and that gives them customers.”

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Background information is here: Breitbart.tv – NBC News Caught Red Handed ‘Selectively Editing’ & ‘ Doctoring’ Video to Smear Gov Perry as Racist

Cross-Posted: TobyToons.com (Conservative Political Cartoons)

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Hillsdale professor and author Burt Folsom joins Pejman Yousefzadeh and Kevin Holtsberry to discuss his book, New Deal or Raw Deal? How FDR’s Economic Legacy Has Damaged America

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

Buy the Book: New Deal or Raw Deal? How FDR’s Economic Legacy Has Damaged America
Professor Burt Folsom
Mackinac Institute
Hillsdale College
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I’ve poked fun at Paul Krugman for his views on health care and British fiscal policy, and I’ve semi-defended him about unemployment subsidies and housing bubbles.

Now it’s time for some more mockery.

Back in 2001, Paul Krugman received some much-deserved criticism for stating that the 9-11 terrorist attacks would be stimulative for the economy.

He committed the “broken-window” fallacy, popularized more than 150 years ago by a famous French economist, Frederic Bastiat.

Breaking a window at the local bakery, Bastiat explained, might generate business for the town glazier, but only at the expense of some other merchant, like a tailor, who would have benefited if the baker didn’t have to spend money on a new window.

In other words, the destruction of wealth is not good for an economy. At best, it makes us poorer and then shifts how current income is allocated. This is why Bastiat wrote (perhaps predicting the emergence of Krugman):

There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.

But we have to give Krugman credit for a bizarre form of ideological consistency. He is willing to advocate bigger government, no matter how sloppy the reasoning or how quirky the rationale.

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