Current Events in November 2016

Protein is an important staple of any diet. It helps maintain your body by building and repairing muscle, and it is an essential element for healthy bones, cartilage, skin, and blood. However, new research suggests that a high-protein diet may not be good for some people, especially older women.

In a study conducted by the American Heart Association, researchers found women over the age of 50 were at greater risk of heart failure if they followed a high-protein diet. Interestingly, this connection proved to be true for consumption of meats, while protein from vegetables was found to be beneficial.

"Higher calibrated total dietary protein intake appears to be associated with substantially increased heart failure risk while vegetable protein intake appears to be protective, although additional studies are needed to further explore this potential association," said study author Dr. Mohamad Firas Barbour.

Source of protein is key

In order to come to their findings, the researchers asked participants to self-report their diet while also tracking protein intake through special biomarkers. Special attention was paid to the source of protein (i.e. protein from meat vs. protein from vegetables/other sources).

After collecting the data, Barbour and his colleagues found that risk of heart failure was higher in women who had high-protein diets rich in meat consumption. This proved to be true across all participating women, regardless of age (over 50), race, ethnicity, or level of education.

The presence of other medical conditions – such as high blood pressure, diabetes, coronary artery disease, anemia, or atrial fibrillation – was also a non-factor.

Barbour states that while the findings should be “interpreted with caution,” they could point to a need for better understanding of heart health in older women.

"While a better understanding of dietary risk is still needed, it appears that heart failure among postmenopausal women is not only highly prevalent but preventable by modifying diet," Barbour said. "Heart failure is highly prevalent, especially in post-menopausal women; therefore, a better understanding of nutrition-related factors associated with heart failure is needed."

Parents come armed with the instinct to keep their little one safe at all costs. It is this instinct which leads many new parents to make sure they’re as up-to-date as possible on matters of infant safety.

Infants who stay in car seats for long periods of time could be at an increased risk of suffocating, BBC News reports. The recent study, which used a simulator to mimic infants in a rear-facing car seat, found that an hour in the car seat caused signs of distress in newborns.

Neck muscles still developing

The researchers found that when infants stayed in the car seat for an hour, they exhibited signs of distress including increased heart rate and a decrease in the amount of oxygen in their blood.

To help ensure the safety of infants when traveling by car, the researchers recommend having an adult to sit next to the baby to monitor their breathing. Avoiding long car trips altogether is also recommended.

Toyota will pay up to $3.4 billion to settle a class action lawsuit that alleged its pickup truck and SUV frames were prone to rust because they received inadequate rust protection at the factory.

The company has agreed to inspect the vehicles for 12 years from the day they were sold or leased to determine whether the frames need to be replaced. If rust is found, Toyota will replace the frame.

The settlement covers Tacoma trucks from the model years 2005 through 2010, Sequoias from 2005 through 2008, and Tundras from the 2007 and 2008 model years.

Toyota earlier recalled some of the vehicles covered by the lawsuit, but owners of other models have also reported rust problems. 

"Driving my 1998 Tacoma Toyota truck at 65 mph and heard a click. Drove home at a crawl and found the frame had cracked completely through. There was only 56,000 miles on the truck," said George of Millis, Mass., in a ConsumerAffairs review. "I scrapped the truck at a loss of $3,000. Most importantly I do not trust Toyota with the safety of my family!

The proposed settlement was filed last week before U.S. District Judge Fernando Olguin in Los Angeles.

"We want our customers to have a great ownership experience, so we are pleased to resolve this litigation in a way that benefits them and demonstrates that we stand behind the quality and reliability of our vehicles," Toyota said in a statement, according to Automotive News. 

American Apparel is bankrupt again, less than a year after it emerged from an earlier bankruptcy filing. Ths Los Angeles clothing manufacturer says it is selling $66 million worth of intellectual property and other assets to Gildan Activewear.

Gildan owns and operates vertically-integrated, large-scale manufacturing facilities which are primarily located in Central America, the Caribbean Basin, North America, and Bangladesh.

The company has been trying to deal with shrinking sales and other issues since Dov Charney, the company’s founder and former CEO, was ousted in December 2014 over allegations of misconduct, including sexual harrassment.

American Apparel has promoted itself as an example of a successful manufacturing operation in an era when most manufacturing has moved overseas. It has been a heavy supporter of immigration, noting that many of its California employees are immigrants.

Strategic move

“We are confident that this decision is the best strategic move forward, in order to preserve the legacy of the American Apparel brand,” Bradley Scher, chairman of American Apparel’s board of directors, said in a letter to employees, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

For over a decade, American Apparel was strictly a wholesaler, providing blank T-shirts to retailers across the country. The company went retail in 2003, and opened a jaw-dropping 260 locations worldwide, a decision that has contributed to its financial woes ever since.

Tasteful design and eye-catching ads that played up the "Made in USA" angle, made AA an attractive alternative to big-name retailers like the Gap and Banana Republic, especially for young shoppers. 

But restive investors and sluggish sales, combined with Charney's issues, combined to drag down the company's stock price and hamper its future prospects. 

Getting through the home mortgage approval process is a lot trickier than it once was, and it turns out a large number of homebuyers who successfully make it end up with a case of buyer's remorse.

They don't regret the home purchase so much as the selection of the mortgage to pay for it.

That's the chief takeaway from the J.D. Power 2016 U.S. Primary Mortgage Origination Satisfaction Study, which found 21% of customers who bought a home regret their choice of lender, and 27% of first-time home buyers regret their choice.

There appear to be two reasons. For many consumers, the regret stems from a poor experience with the lender. This can be caused by more problems than expected, broken promises, and poor communication.

Felt lender pressure

The second reason for dissatisfaction has to do with price. Even though they got multiple quotes and appeared to do their homework, this group of new homeowners regrets picking their lender. Of the largest complaints, 72% of those regretting their lender choice said they felt pressured to pick a particular mortgage product that, in hindsight, was not a good fit.

They said in many cases they went with a particular lender because it had the lowest rates, or they had done business with it in the past.

“This ‘happy buyer’s remorse’ is in part due to customers feeling that circumstances out of their control drove them to a particular choice and that options weren’t totally clear,” said Craig Martin, director of the mortgage practice at J.D. Power.

Had to jump through hoops

The problem, says Martin, is many of these consumers are happy with their interest rate, but feel like they had to jump through a long series of hoops to finally get the loan approved. In the end, these consumers might not fully understand exactly what they got. What lenders have to worry about, he says, is these consumers may be happy when they sign the loan papers, but not later on.

Lenders, of course, are under new pressure since the financial crisis, having to implement tougher underwriting requirements. These requirements have had the effect of prolonging the process, no doubt creating negative feelings along the way.

Quicken Loans ranked highest

The J.D. Power survey found Quicken Loans ranked highest in customer satisfaction in the loan approval process. It's followed by CitiMortgage and Ditech Financial.

The report's authors say consumers can improve their chances of being happy with their loan by selecting a lender and a mortgage product before they decide on a home. The researchers found consumers who did that were significantly more satisfied with the result.

Housing affordability was down slightly in the third quarter as rising home prices offset a dip in mortgage interest rates.

According to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB/Wells Fargo) Housing Opportunity Index, 61.4 % of new and existing homes sold in the July-September period were affordable to families earning the U.S. median income of $65,700. In the previous three-month time frame, 62% of homes were affordable.

“Historically low interest rates and firming job growth are positive indicators that housing markets across the nation will continue to gradually improve,” said NAHB Chairman Ed Brady. “Home prices, however, continue to be affected by the rising costs of construction, both in terms of land and labor.”

The national median home price increased from $240,000 in the second quarter to $247,000 in the third quarter, as average mortgage rates slipped from 3.88% to 3.76% in the same period.

Most affordable markets

Elgin, Ill., was rated the nation’s most affordable major housing market, where 94.3% of all new and existing homes sold in third quarter were affordable to families earning the area’s median income of $82,500. Fairbanks, Alaska, was rated the nation’s most affordable smaller market, with 97.7% of homes affordable to families earning the median income of $93,800.

Rounding out the top five affordable major housing markets in respective order were Youngstown-Warren-Boardman, Ohio-Pa.; Scranton-Wilkes-Barre-Hazleton, Pa.; Indianapolis-Carmel-Anderson, Ind.; and Syracuse, N.Y.

Smaller markets joining Fairbanks at the top of the list included Monroe, Mich.; Binghamton, N.Y.; Wheeling, W.Va.-Ohio; and Davenport-Moline-Rock Island, Iowa-Ill.

Least affordable markets

For the 16th straight quarter, San Francisco-Redwood City-South San Francisco, Calif., was the nation’s least affordable major housing market. There, just 9.7% of homes sold in the third quarter were affordable to families earning the area’s median income of $104,700.

Other major metros at the bottom of the affordability chart were located in California. In descending order, they included Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale; Anaheim-Santa Ana-Irvine; San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara; and Santa Rosa.

Four of the five least affordable small housing markets were also in California. At the very bottom of the affordability chart was Salinas, where 17.6% of all new and existing homes sold were affordable to families earning the area’s median income of $63,500.

In descending order, other small markets at the lowest end of the affordability scale included Santa Cruz-Watsonville; Napa; San Luis Obispo-Paso Robles-Arroyo Grande; and Kahului-Wailuku-Lahaina, Hawaii.

Chocolate Shoppe Ice Cream Company of Madison, Wis, is expanding it's earlier recall of select ice cream products.

The products were made with a chocolate chip cookie dough ingredient that may be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes.

The following products are being recalled:

Chocolate Shoppe Ice Cream Co. – 3-Gallon Cartons

• Cookie Dough (code date 10/15/17, 10/21/17, 11/1/17 & 11/8/17),
• Heaps of Love (code date 10/20/17, 10/28/17 & 11/8/17),
• Peanut Butter Cookie Dough (code date 10/9/17, 10/18/17 & 11/1/17),
• Sticks & Stones (code date 10/26/17).

Chocolate Shoppe Ice Cream Co. – Pints

• Cookie Dough (code date 10/21/17).

The Baked Bear brand – 3-Gallon Cartons

• The Baked Bear brand Cookie Dough (code date 10/13/17, 10/15/17, 10/21/17).

The recalled products were distributed to various ice cream shops, online outlets and limited grocery stores in Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin.

What to do

Customers who purchased the recalled products should destroy or return them to the place of purchase for a full refund.

Consumers with questions may contact the company at 800-466-8043 or by email at info@chocolateshoppeicecream.com.

The Trump Administration is still in its infancy, but that's not stopping automakers from proposing that it go easy on the fuel efficiency measures imposed by the outgoing Obama White House.

The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers wants Trump to hit the pause button on the midterm evaluation of Obama's 2025 fuel economy and greenhouse rules until the carmakers have a chance to outline "a pathway forward" for the rules.

The Alliance says the rules are a "substantial challenge" beginning in 2017, when increasingly stringent standards begin to go into effect. 

“We live at a moment where technology and change are swamping the regulatory capacity to manage our emerging reality. Reform is imperative,” Alliance CEO Mitch Bainwol said in a letter to the Trump transition team, obtained by Automotive News. Trump has said he will review existing regulations that threaten jobs.

Not just mpg

It's not just the fuel efficiency standards that automakers want Trump to review. They're also concerned about the Transportation Department's guidelines for self-driving cars and want Trump to set up a "presidential advisory committee" to oversee the Environmental Protection Administration, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Federal Trade Commission, Federal Communications Commission, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the other agencies that oversee various aspects of the car business.

Bainwol also wants Trump to consider the costs imposed by California's zero-emission vehicle sales mandates, which require that 15 percent of sales in California be zero-emission vehicles like electric- or hydrogen-powered. 

“The Administration should engage as appropriate to help address these ZEV issues -- especially to help avoid the creation of a patchwork of requirements that will frustrate the overall intent of the ‘One National Program,’” Bainwol wrote, according to Automotive News.

That argument's not likely to be well-received in California, where Gov. Jerry Brown issued a statement Thursday saying the nation's most populous state would not back down on environmental protection and climate change issues.

"We will protect the precious rights of our people and continue to confront the existential threat of our time — devastating climate change," Brown said.

Secession movement

Trump's election has heightened interest in a secession movement that's backed by Silicon Valley tech investor Shervin Pishevar and others. The "Yes California Independence Campaign" is gathering signatures to put a question on the November 2018 ballot that would authorize a statewide independence vote for the spring of 2019.

It would take hundreds of thousands of signatures to put the question on the ballot and millions more to actually authorize the state to pursue secession.

Pishevar argues California could be economically self-sufficient, given the size of its economy.

“As the sixth largest economy in the world, California is more economically powerful than France and has a population larger than Poland,” the group said in a statement. “California compares and competes with countries, not just the 49 other states.”

There's little legal basis for such an effort. The Constitution outlines the steps taken for new states to be added but does not address any way for states to leave the Union.

The only actual secession effort in American history was, of course, the Civil War, in which a coalition of seven southern states sought to declare their independence. President Abraham Lincoln feared the result of secession would be the crumbling of the United States.

The result was a four-year armed conflict from 1861 to 1865 that cost 625,000 American lives, nearly as many as have died in all other military actions that the U.S. has entered. For those who may have forgotten their history, the Union forces defeated the Confederate States of America, leaving little legal precedent for other secession efforts. 

You might be one of those people who gets a flu shot every year and carefully navigates through flu season, but that isn’t always a guarantee that you’ll stay healthy. Up to this point, experts have believed that exposure to the flu didn’t really affect your chances of getting it again. However, a new study suggests that might not be true.

Researchers from the University of Arizona and University of California, Los Angeles have found that a person’s susceptibility to animal flu viruses like swine flu and avian flu can be determined by the first strain of flu virus they encounter in their lives. The finding could prove to be monumental in helping people avoid serious illness, as well as economies from suffering the financial toll.

"Even a comparatively weak, mild pandemic flu event like the 2009 H1N1 (swine flu) outbreak is a trillion-dollar affair. A major pandemic like the one we saw in 1918 has the potential to kill large numbers of people and shut down the world's economy," said senior author Michael Worobey.

First encounter is key

In order to explain how our immune systems interact with various flu viruses, Worobey uses an analogy involving lollipops. Basically, it demonstrates how different flu strains share common characteristics that our immune system can respond to effectively if it has encountered it previously.

"Let's say you were first exposed to a human 'orange lollipop' flu as a kid," Worobey explains. "If later in life you encounter another subtype of flu virus, one from a bird and one that your immune system has never seen before but whose proteins also are of a similar 'orange' flavor, your chances of dying are quite low because of cross-protection. But if you were first infected with a virus from the 'blue lollipop' group as kid, that won't protect you against this novel, 'orange' strain."

The researchers tested the theory by studying two devastating avian flu viruses, H5N1 and H7N9. The two strains are a top concern for health officials because they have already caused severe illness and death, and they could eventually mutate and rapidly spread among humans.

After examining all cases pertaining to the two strains, the researchers found that immunity to them could be determined by the first flu strain that people experienced when they were kids. They call the phenomenon “immunological imprinting,” and they believe it likely determines the type of protection your body has against the flu for the rest of your life.

A blessing and a curse

The findings of the study could be groundbreaking because it suggests that there are more factors at play when determining immunity to the flu. In the case of the H5 and H7 strains that were studied, Worobrey notes that even if we have never been exposed to either, our bodies have a chance of being protected against one or the other.

However, the researchers say that their findings aren’t all good news. Worobey explains how immunological imprinting can be both a blessing and a curse.

"In a way it's a good-news, bad-news story. It's good news in the sense that we can now see the factor that really explains a big part of the story: Your first infection sets you up for either success or failure in a huge way, even against 'novel' flu strains. The bad news is the very same imprinting that provides such great protection may be difficult to alter with vaccines: A good universal vaccine should provide protection where you lack it most, but the epidemiological data suggest we may be locked into strong protection against just half of the family tree of flu strains," he said.

The full study has been published in the journal Science. 

If you’re a recent parent, you may be wondering how and when to introduce your little one to food containing peanuts. For guidance, parents of infants can look to guidelines from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

Where should parents begin? In some cases, perhaps with a trip to an allergist. Dr. Amal Assa’ad, co-author of the guidelines, explains that parents should first determine whether or not their child is at high-risk for peanut allergy.

Around 4- to 6-months

The guidelines state that severe eczema and/or an egg allergy are among conditions that may put infants into the “high-risk” category. After a doctor has determined that it is safe, high-risk infants can be introduced to peanut-containing foods when they are around 4- to 6-months old.

While severe eczema may be a red flag, the guidelines note that children with mild to moderate eczema do not need an evaluation. These children can be introduced to peanut-containing foods at home at around 6 months of age (provided they have already started solid foods). If no egg allergies or eczema are of concern, peanut pastes and proteins can be introduced at a time of the family’s choosing.

Previous studies have found that feeding high-risk babies peanut products during infancy can help prevent peanut allergy, but safety should always be considered during the introduction.

Important tips

• Never give whole peanuts to an infant. Whole peanuts can pose a choking hazard.
• To create a peanut puree, mix two teaspoons of peanut butter with hot water.
• After giving your child a small taste of peanut butter, observe your child. Watch closely for any skin or behavior changes. 
• Only introduce peanut-containing foods when your child is otherwise healthy. If your child has a cold or other illness, it’s best to wait until they are well before introducing the new food. 

It takes seven years for a foreclosure, short sale, or bankruptcy to come off a consumer's credit report.

Since the height of the foreclosure tsunami was 2009, a lot of former homeowners, whose credit has been practically non-existent since then, are getting back on their financial feet.

According to an analysis by Experian, one of the three credit agencies, 2.5 million consumers will see their credit standing improve sharply between last June and next June. Of these, the credit agency says 68% are scoring at near-prime or higher credit levels.

Back in the credit market

It means that millions of consumers, largely shut out of the credit market since 2009, will be able to take out loans again. Those who want to buy a home again will most likely qualify for a mortgage, putting even more pressure on extremely tight inventory levels around the country.

Experian also reports that formerly foreclosed or bankrupt borrowers who have already shed those events from the credit reports have returned to the credit markets in large numbers and, by and large, are showing good financial behavior.

The Experian analysis shows 29% of consumers who sold short between 2007 and 2010 have opened a new mortgage, with a delinquency rate that is a full percentage point below the national average.

Win-win

"With millions of borrowers potentially coming back into the housing market, the trends that we're seeing are promising for both the mortgage seeker and the lender," said Michele Raneri, vice president of analytics and new business development at Experian.

Raneri predicts that in the years ahead, these so-called “boomerang borrowers” will be a critical segment of the real-estate market, and perhaps could propel prices still higher.

The Experian report shows that homeowners who had a foreclosure in the past but now have qualified for a mortgage have an average credit score of 680, more than 20% higher than their score at the time of foreclosure.

The record is even better for consumers who sold short. Those who have now qualified for a new mortgage have an average credit score of 706, up 16.5% from when they were forced to sell.

Since the 1964 Surgeon General's report that linked cigarette smoking to cancer, we have known of tobacco's corrosive effects on health.

But just how corrosive is it? A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggests as many as 40% of all cancer cases diagnosed in the U.S. may have a tobacco link.

While tobacco use is most closely associated with lung cancer, the reports cites evidence that it also causes cancers of the mouth and throat, voice box, esophagus, stomach, kidney, pancreas, liver, bladder, cervix, colon, and rectum, and a type of leukemia, known as acute myeloid leukemia.

In short, the report's authors conclude that avoiding tobacco use is the best way to prevent the disease, which affected about 660,000 people in the U.S. from 2009 to 2013, killing more than half.

Another way of looking at it, since 1990 about 1.3 million cancer deaths linked to tobacco have been avoided because either people quit smoking or never started in the first place. CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden says that should just be a start.

Preventable deaths

"There are more than 36 million smokers in the U.S.," Frieden said. "Sadly, nearly half could die prematurely from tobacco-related illnesses, including six million from cancer, unless we implement the programs that will help smokers quit."

But progress has been coming faster in recent years. In a separate CDC report, health officials note that cigarette smoking among U.S. adults has dropped more than 20% from 2005. From 2014 to 2015, there was a 1.7% drop, resulting in the lowest number of adult smokers since the government began collecting data in 1965.

Cigarette smoking surged in the years after World War II, some say encouraged by the fact that every GI's rations included a pack of cigarettes. As viewers of the hit series “Mad Men” saw, cigarettes were a ubiquitous part of American life in the 1960s. In 1965, the CDC estimates more than 42% of Americans were smoking.

Currently, the CDC estimates 16.8% of U.S. adults still smoke cigarettes, leading to more than $300 billion in annual health care costs.

Hackers were able to break into servers operated by Adobe Systems and get access to the personal information of nearly three million consumers in 2013.

Now, the software company has reached a settlement with 15 states that brought actions on behalf of residents. The states claimed that Adobe did not take “reasonable security measures” to protect the data. It was similar to the charges leveled by other large companies that suffered data breaches in the past.

The settlement requires Adobe to pay $1 million, to be divided among the 15 states. It also requires the company to adopt stronger security protocols, if it has not already done so.

"Consumers should have a reasonable expectation that their personal and financial information is properly safeguarded from unauthorized access," said Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen.

Jepson praised Adobe for working in good faith with the states bringing the action and for that, he says, it deserves credit.

“Companies have a responsibility to consumers to protect their personal information, and this settlement will ensure Adobe establishes stronger safeguards in the future,” said Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan.

How the breach occured

In September 2013, Adobe learned the hard drive for one of its application servers was closing in on its capacity. After getting an alert, Adobe learned that an unauthorized attempt was being made to crack encrypted customer payment card numbers residing on the server.

Adobe was able to stop the decryption process and disconnected the server from the network. However, it found the attacker had compromised a public-facing Web server and used it to access other servers on Adobe’s network. In the end, the hacker was able to make off with encrypted payment card numbers and expiration dates, names, addresses, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, and usernames, as well as other data.

“This case is yet another example of the importance of protecting your personal and financial information,” said Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller. “I continue to be an advocate for Indiana’s credit freeze protections and encourage all Hoosiers to place credit freezes with the major credit bureaus.”

States participating in the settlement include Arkansas, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, Minnesota, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Vermont.

Few things unite Americans like rage against price-gouging pharmaceutical companies. But that growing sentiment had little effect on the drug industry’s comfortable pockets during this week’s election. One measure in California that would have capped drug prices failed miserably, and big pharma shares are reportedly soaring following Trump’s win.

Pharma cash floods California race

Several of the people who were in the presidential running this year voiced support for tackling drug prices and continue to do so. In California, just days before the election, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders rallied people to support Prop. 61, an initiative developed by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation. The proposition would have set the prices of all drugs purchased through California’s state health programs to the lowest price paid by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Despite Sanders’ persistent efforts, Californians defeated the measure 54-46 percent. “This was a tremendous uphill battle from the very start,” a strategist told the Sacramento Bee. The pharmaceutical industry raised over $100 million to defeat the measure and ran an aggressive advertising campaign against it.

Republicans to tackle rising drug costs? 

President-elect Donald Trump has also previously talked about lowering drug prices, though not as much as Hillary Clinton did. Back in January, Trump told supporters that he wanted to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies, a policy that would likely keep drug prices lower and cut into big pharma’s profits.

“We don’t do it. Why? Because of the drug companies,” he reportedly said in some not-very-Republican sounding remarks.

Trump has also said on the campaign trail that he would allow cheaper drugs to be imported to the United States. As people like Sanders and patients' rights groups will tell you, the United States pays some of the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs.

"Congress will need the courage to step away from the special interests and do what is right for America...Allowing consumers access to imported, safe, and dependable drugs from overseas will bring more options to consumers," his health plan said.

But the pharmaceutical industry apparently isn’t convinced that Trump will be a champion of the sick or do what he said he would do. On Wednesday, shares in pharma and biotech companies soared. Hillary Clinton "not being in the White House removes the notion of some sort of price controls off the table," Tony Butler, an analyst at Guggenheim Securities, told Reuters. "From the perspective of pharmaceutical, biotechnology, generic (drug) stocks, (the election) went about as well as could be expected."

Shares of Pfizer rose 8.5 percent, Mallinckrodt rose 10 percent, and Celgene rose 10.4 percent.

President-Elect Donald J. Trump made a lot of promises during his campaign, one of the most notable being his pledge to "drain the swamp" in Washington, D.C., a pledge based on the popular misconception that the nation's capital is located on the site of a former swamp.

In fact, the District of Columbia may be marshy, but it was never technically a swamp. And it's not a swamp today either -- it's more like a beehive that has been whacked with a big stick. The place, in a word, is buzzing.

It's been eight years since there was a change in administrations and a change in ruling party to boot. Leaving politics aside for a moment, this is a bonanza for Realtors who will soon have hundreds of upscale homes to list as dejected Democrats leave town and hundreds of jubilant incoming Republicans replace them.

(Realtors prefer for the successful candidate to be from New York, California, or some other high cost-of-living state; they tend to be willing and able to spend more on housing. The first and, as it turns out last, Clinton Administration was not popular with the housing trade).

But forget Realtors, the business of Washington is lobbying. There are all kinds of lobbyists. Some represent charitable causes and what used to be called "do-gooder" groups, but the high-powered ones represent business interests. Although they tend to be vilified by candidates and everyone else, lobbyists are necessary since, without them, businesses and institutions would soon be hopelessly hamstrung by regulations, at least in theory.

In their simplest form, lobbyists provide information to lawmakers, helping them understand what effect a given piece of legislation would have on a specific industry. When necessary, gentle persuasion may be employed. (Full disclosure: I worked for several years with what we call "government affairs firms" in D.C. but have no current ties with any special interest groups or lobbying firms). 

A lengthy list

Given all this, it was not surprising today when I came across a list of the lobbyists who were heading up various elements of the Trump transition team. There are lobbyists representing Altria, Coca-Cola, General Elecric, Dow Chemical, and Duke Energy, among many others, in charge of finding top appointees for Homeland Security, Labor, Energy, Interior, Agriculture, Defense, and the list goes on.

Shocking? Not really. Since top Obama appointees will soon turn in their resignations and leave, new appointees must be identified, vetted, grilled, and examined.

It's a lengthy process and one that must be carried out largely by the President-Elect's staff. He is not yet the President, after all, and does not command the full resources of the executive branch, so it's necessary to find volunteers who know the territory, are accustomed to working long hours, and looking out for the arcane details that will bite you if you don't see them coming -- lobbyists, in other words.

Many lobbyists are former government officials who worked on the Hill or in one of the agencies. Their bosses tend to be former officeholders -- Senators and Representatives who are living the heavenly (and lucrative) afterlife that follows a few terms in office.

In Trump's case, he is especially dependent on Washington insiders. He, after all, is a businessman, not a politician. He has never held elective office, doesn't have many close contacts in D.C., and his swamp-draining campaign promises (and those leaked videotapes) basically made him a pariah in the political world. 

A jarring transition

"He couldn't even staff the campaign because no one wanted to be associated with him," said one Trump aide quoted in a Politico newsletter. "It's different now but there's going to have to be a lot of forgive and forget."

Working in Trump's favor -- lobbying firms are scrambling to demonstrate to their clients that they wield influence with the incoming Trumpians and are desperate to volunteer to help the transition move smoothly. 

The transition from Political Outsider to President-Elect can be jarring. One minute you're railing against special interests, greedy capitalists, and featherbedding bureaucrats. The next, you're the biggest insider of all, your desk the one where the buck stops.

Love him or hate him, Trump faces a difficult few months. He won't have time to be draining any swamps. And while struggling to assemble his team, Trump will know that across town, plans are being made by rivals already hard at work on the 2018 election. His oversights today will be the political fodder of tomorrow's campaigns. 

The complex circuitry connecting the brain to important muscles in the body may hold the key to helping paralyzed patients get up and walk.

Like, getting up and walking almost immediately.

An international team of scientists, writing up their findings in the journal Nature, say implanting electrodes in a portion of the spine that hasn't been injured can reopen the pathway from the brain to leg muscles.

They conducted experiments using two primates who had temporarily become paralyzed in one leg. After implanting the electrodes, the scientists say the monkeys could get up and start walking. They say such a remedy could be available for human use within a decade.

According to the Mayo Clinic Staff, a spinal cord injury often causes permanent changes to the body below the injury, creating a life-changing situation. Yet the Mayo doctors acknowledge that many researchers have long been optimistic that doctors would someday find a way to repair these injuries.

Severity can vary

People suffer spinal cord injuries in many ways. A number of these injuries have occurred during athletic competition. Others are the result of accidents. The severity can vary, based on the area of the spin that is injured.

“Most injuries to the spinal cord don't completely sever it,” the National Institutes of Health (NIH) explains on one of its websites. “Instead, an injury is more likely to cause fractures and compression of the vertebrae, which then crush and destroy axons -- extensions of nerve cells that carry signals up and down the spinal cord between the brain and the rest of the body. An injury to the spinal cord can damage a few, many, or almost all of these axons.”

NIH points out that some patients recover from spinal injuries, but others don't.

In the experiments on monkeys, the researchers say they were encouraged because the primates were able to get up and walk immediately after the implant, without having to go through any kind of physical retraining.

Up and around in six days

“As early as six days post-injury and without prior training of the monkeys, the brain–spine interface restored weight-bearing locomotion of the paralyzed leg on a treadmill and overground,” the authors write. “The implantable components integrated in the brain–spine interface have all been approved for investigational applications in similar human research, suggesting a practical translational pathway for proof-of-concept studies in people with spinal cord injury.”

There are actually two implantable devices that make the system work. One is implanted in the brain, the other in the spine. The devices then communicate wirelessly.

In addition to helping paralyzed people walk again, the scientists say they may be able to use their discovery to regrow damaged circuits. But they concede the electrodes carry some limitations that require additional research.