Saturday, October 26, 2013

How Long It Takes

Yesterday's post precipitated this inquiry:
Dear John.
May I ask you the following question:
How much time did it take to go from starting as a self-employed enterpreneur to finally reach your dream lifestyle?
Thanks in advance.
The premise in this question is there is a formula that one can follow.  Like, get a business degree, take the courses for a CPAs license, pass the test, and then voila' you are a CPA.

I've had my dream lifestyle since the day I was born.  But, hey sometimes things don't work out.    Why would anyone want to know about mine?  I think a person would want to know about THEIR dream lifestyle.  No one can help you with that, because it muse be discovered, and probably the best/fastest way is to start your own business.

Your dream lifestyle is a matter of personal transformation, something I do not offer.  What I do offer is how to find that business saving time and money.  There is no other template for how things will work out for you, and to ask the question is to expect there is.

Start by shifting to where no other experiences matter, you are creating something new for yourself, by serving others.  Don't look for heros.

When you hit the right passion/joy balance you could care less about anyone else's journey.

Get there, there is no guru or example for you to follow, just tactics and attitude, and the thing no one else can do right, except you.

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Friday, October 25, 2013

Competing on Price, Competing on Design

You will fail if you try to compete on price.  I can guarantee that with 100% certainty. Listen carefully to yourself, do you EVER mention price as a factor in your offer?  If so, you are competing on price.

 If one cannot compete on price, what other basis is there?  The “secret” is to compete on design.  Your role and value at the small business level is to be a innovator, which means premium prices and unique designs. You make more money doing less.  You may be selling hats like anyone else, but they are upscale, specialty hats.  You may have a hole in the wall restaurant, but your Chow Mein is $22.50 a plate.  

If you plan to be a big business billionaire like Steve Jobs, you start here.  If you plan to be a small business billionaire like Ty Warner you start here.  If you plan to have your dream lifestyle, and don’t care about the money, you start here.

But how you make the money you need is to compete on design, bringing your passion and the joy in working on solutions to your passion, others’ design talent, with the world’s best producer to demanding retailers, for their stores.

That’s it.

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Thursday, October 24, 2013

Chairman Mao & Starbucks

USA press is all atwitter at criticism Starbucks is taking in China for having s super-premium price on their coffee.  The fact is, Starbucks charges more in Chinese capitals than in any other country.
Chinese state-run CCTV fumed over the fact that a grande latte in Beijing cost (in US dollars) $4.42, with the same serving costing $3.97 in London, $3.26 in Chicago and a mere $2.39 in Mumbai.
That government press would complain is cited by USA media that Communist China still does not get "the free market."

AS if anyone in USA press gets the free market.

If you google "price gouging" you'll get 6.8 million hits.  Presumably charges of "price gouging" happen in USA as well.

But what is the view in China on the topic of Starbucks "price -gouging"?
Amy Li, a blogger for the South China Post, perhaps sums it up best: "My advice for grumpy Chinese coffee drinkers? If you don't like the price then don't buy it."
There is a more interesting back story, methinks.  Under Mao there were "speak bitterness" campaigns where people who were unhappy with anything (except communism) were encouraged to vent.  And vent they did, with horrific results.  No doubt some elements in China yearn for those days, which they see as happier times.

Battle lines are being drawn, and venting is coming out.  But so far, as the Chinese press terms this, it is a tempest in a coffee pot.

Reform in China: so far, so good.

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Chow Channel and Passion

If you watch this 5 minute video on a New York Pizzeria, you'll get a sense of how the passion/joy combo works.  This fellow's work is his lifestyle, and his lifestyle is his work.  Think about this as you go to work today to make someone else's hopes and dream come true by trading your prime time for some money, money you spend trying to have a lifestyle during your subprime hours.

A funny aspect is a commenter complains the guy charges $22 for a veggie pizza.  So don't buy one.  There are enough people who are happy to do so to keep this guy in business.

From here you'll see a group of other similarly formatted short food/passion/joy videos.


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Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Inc. Magazine Tells Us Why We Need the Government

Columnist Jill Krasny at Inc Magazine is surprised that welfare-queen intense Silicon Valley has people who call for secession.  (Why not, Black Muslims checked out and have done quite well, like the Amish.) She finds other magazine writers who agree with her.

But of course, Jill, we all love a system that works for us and cannot fathom why anyone, for whom the system does not work, might feel different.  Or more likely, she feels there is something wrong with anyone who does not want to be essentially a welfare queen.

Ms Krasny reassures us that the State-run media remains utterly clueless as to any alternative but to a welfare regime.  So let's work through her piece... first she quotes an offending seminar speaker...

 "We need to run the experiment, to show what a society run by Silicon Valley looks like without affecting anyone who wants to live under the Paper Belt," .... "We need to build opt-in society, outside the US, run by technology." 

The reason we had 13 colonies called 13 states so people could experiment with other polities.  What is wrong with bringing that back?  Why, lack of welfare queenism!

 Do they really think they can protect their intellectual property, stave off patent trolls, pay for healthcare, and innovate all on their own? 

Jane, do you really think they cannot?  Or better yet, do you think any of these people would not instantly eliminate IPR regime, and open a free market in healthcare in which any and all can afford what medicine they need?  By means of free innovation?  Jane, you truly live on another planet from those who are in business.

Here are three other reasons these guys sorely need a reality check. 
Uncle Sam innovates 
Think government funding only harms innovation? Allow us to introduce you to Uncle Sam's most successful start-up: Silicon Valley. As editor-in-chief Eric Schurenberg outlined in Inc. recently, for a number of years, Stanford was essentially a research lab for the CIA and several of its engineering Ph.D. theses were actually classified because they were so integral to its technology

Jane, you should read this out loud to yourself.  You say the military industrial complex is a fountain of innovation.  And then you say they classify ideas, making them non-marketable.  This happens more than you know.  Where does the money for Murder, Inc research come from?  Well, it is taking from other, non-war productive uses.  Reflect Jane, how is all that warmaking working out for us?  Afghanistan, much?  Since you were born, have we won anywhere?  We keep getting our asses kicked by farmers, who do not have "intellectual property rights."  Visit Vietnam.

Martin Kenney, a professor at UC Davis, described the Department of Defense on Marketplace as "the greatest venture capitalist of all." To his mind, much of the technology we use today was funded by the government, from cell phones to satellites to global positioning systems and even the Internet. So think of that the next time you're in line at the post office. 

This is funny.  Jane, ahem, the Post Office is a Govt gig.   Darpa made the internet when, before you were born, all economics, law and theory said there could be only one phone company at a time.  thus, no cell phones, internet, etc, for the rest of us.  Jimmy Carter challenged that, Ronald Reagan took the credit.  Perhaps the DoD is the greatest VC of all, but that would be horrific, if true.  Think of all the good things we've been denied because of it.

Imagine that, 
In-Q-Tel backs cutting-edge start-ups
While most VCs have their eyes trained on the social-local-mobile craze, the CIA's venture arm, In-Q-Tel, has been quietly investing in start-ups that help the organization with its super-secret work. Among them are RedOwl Analytics, which harnesses the power of big data to keep the financial sector honest, and Destineer, a videogame developer whose first IQT project was created with help from active duty U.S. Marines. 

Yes, when disgraced Adm Poindexter came up with the TIA and was shot down instantly, the CIA came up with its own thing, and all of a sudden there was google and a series of other intel based services, that crowded out earlier successful ventures.  It is no secret Oracle was started as a CIA contractor, and countless others.  And what has it got us?  Google is outlawed in China, sued relentlessly elsewhere, and IBM watched its sales drop 40% in China now that it is known their products carry spyware.  And imagine that, the military assists in making video games that tell 10 year old boys that violence is glorious and they will always win.  (But really, they know better, so they go to gun-free zones like grammar schools, theatres and such when they act out their fantasies.)  Jill, where is the good part in all of this?

And there is more in that paragraph.  Why is the CIA interested in keeping the financial sector honest?  Don’t we already have some seventeen federal agencies on the job?  And by the way, how has that been working out?  Finally, way to out a few more companies.  You should get an Edward Snowden Award.

Small business owners need access to capital 
With the current economy in the shape that it is, everyone can agree that a loan would be helpful. 

No Jill, you are wrong.  We are in this mess because of State manipulation of credit.  No doubt it is news to anyone at Inc magazine, but people need customers, not loans.  In the history of mankind, almost all businesses are started with the resources at hand, not loans.  But the State massively interferes in freely contracting between parties, which in turn discourages people to the point they too become welfare queens.  

Yes, total volume for all small business loans has steadily decreased since 2008, according to the Small Business Administration's small business lending report for 2012. But while job growth, wages, and gross domestic product have remained stagnant, Inc.'s Jeremy Quitner reports that demand is stronger than ever. In July, the Federal Reserve's Senior Loan Officer Survey reported a general easing of loan policies for commercial industrialization and commercial real estate loans from banks just to meet it. 

Ahh... here we go, another Inc writer assures us, in spite of getting blindsided by every popping bubble, things are opening up right now.

Yes, in a few years, we’ll see yet another disaster from each opening of the spigot, like clockwork.

In all fairness, the magazine is called Inc, which is short for incorporated, that state created entity that has morphed into the monstrosity that corporations are today.  Why should anyone expect a magazine devoted to welfare-queenism promote anything but welfare-queenism?


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Li Kang Shing and Government

Li Kang Shing is a Hong Kong billionaire, and inspiration to anyone who admires rages to riches dreams.  yes, of course he is very much tied in with the powers that be, and watching him tells you much about what is going on in China.

He has been rearranging his investments, in a pattern that suggests he is nervous about the neo-Maoism rising in China.

China has problems, lots of them.  The Communist Party needs to keep a lid on things, and will not wait until matters are desperate.

1. Bo Xilai's show trial stands out like a sore thumb among legitimate crack-down on corruption.  Bo being sent to his room for a few years will shut up the productive moderates while President Xi cleans house.  (Frankly, Bo is safer incarcerated right now than free.  I am still betting he'll be back.)

2. Pres. Xi is using China's #1 brand for housecleaning, Mao's Mass Line cleanser.  No one in power forgets what was, and to announce mass line correctives could not be more clear as to seriousness.  Heads will roll.

3. Pres Xi is on top of the second largest economy in the world, moving up, while its competitors are on the way down.  If China goes flat, it will still surpass the USA.  Yet for Xi it is casual Friday in dress and accoutrement, circa 1977.  That is called leadership.  Just as Pope Francis had the Bling Bishop grovelling before him this week, no one called on the carpet by Xi will be able to claim hypocrisy.

Li Ka Shing made his fortune when her realized that China could take Hong Kong anytime in the tumltuous 1960s, but did not.  Others were fleeing.  China can even more so "take" Hong Kong today. But it has not, nor Macau.

Hot Chinese money is distorting Hong Kong.  Xi's reforms may very well help Hong Kong.  My bet is it will, although it is unwise to bet against Li.

As a tribute to Hong Kong, Li Ka Shing is famous for being unclear at one point on how officials are elected in Hong Kong.  When the government only protects the borders and delivers the mail, then politics is of little interest.  And why should it be any more?

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Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Detroit, Unfunded Pensions, and You

The judge overseeing Detroit's bankruptcy has restated both the law and the obvious, and that is pensioners are unsecured creditors.  That means the banks and the providers of goods and services are paid before the pensioners are paid.  Or, in other words, pensioners will be lucky to get pennies on the dollar, if anything.
Oct 21 (Reuters) - The federal judge overseeing Detroit's bankruptcy filing called the city's pension funds "unsecured creditors" and stated that any special protections for them would violate federal bankruptcy law.
Someone signing up for government work in say 1950, or 1960, or 1970, or 1980, or 1990 or any time could easily have seen this coming.  There has been no time since the 1950s in which is was not common knowledge that there was no way that the pension schemes could work out.  Nonetheless union leaders brought back pretend gains from negotiations, and the politicians pretended to give concessions that could not be fulfilled.

This bankruptcy was inevitable and the good that comes out of it will be that no government worker can depend on his pension.  That introduced into the calculation will assist in re-allocating resources.  Right now wages are too high as employers compete with government for workers, and employers are obliged to overcharge to satisfy the taxes to cover the wages of the government workers.

Further, the existence of the state itself inhibits the freedom to contract and freedom from force and fraud that denies us to some extent to discover the unseen opportunities.  Bankruptcies clear the deck of bad investment.

Anyone who believes the pensioners will eventually somehow be paid has not paid attention to history. The Roman clerks, the Chinese eunuchs, even the Samurai, when they are no longer of service, they are cut loose mercilessly.

What makes it merciless is the lack of hope for any alternative.  In Moscow I saw men guarding very many empty buildings.    I suppose that is a job.    The military is not looking like a good option since we have an unbroken record of losing every war we start going back to the 1950s.  And all other fields are rather moribund due to taxes and regulation.

All this leaves in terms of opportunity is the unseen.  That can only be brought forth in freedom.  But the problem is whoever was busy gathering up 70 million French phone calls one month is now coming back home, to do what?  I guess gather up 70 million USA phone calls.

As with Obamacare, we are paying too much for a state that does too much.  I talked to a women who is building a market for gluten-free mixes from her kitchen table, organizing production in one state and sales in another.  She is finding customers that were not there before, the unseen.

We need to get away from the bad idea that there may be something to learn in snooping on others, and celebrate the discovering the heretofore unseen.

Retired cops are going to have an especially hard time converting their habits and inclinations into a job more than watching an empty building in Detroit.  To get out of this mess will take personal transformation.  Business start-up includes an element of personal transformation.

Don't wait to be told what you can know right now: your pension is unfunded, and no one owes you anything.


Update:  If you are in the SF Bay Area late February, I'll be Foothill DeAnza College is hosting an all-day import-export startup course.

Class Description

Come learn the strategies those thriving in small business international trade use to grow and build their business. You will be guided through selecting products, finding customers, working with governments, licensing, bankers, brokers, carriers, financing, costing, pricing and gaining orders for your products, all from a practicing professional. Highly rated by students for content, pace and humor. Recommended textHow Small Business Trades Worldwide by Instructor is available at on Amazon.com. 

Class ID: 2907
Saturday, 9:00 am - 5:00 pm; 1 session starting February 22, 2014, ending February 22, 2014
Course Fee: $89.00
Instructor: Spiers
Location: De Anza College, G Building , Rm. G-7       Map

You may enroll here....


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Omens and Romney/Obamacare

We'd be at the exact same place we are today if Romney had won the election, and that Rose Garden damage control session would have occurred anyway.  Sometimes there are omens in these events, like the young woman who fell ill during the news session.

Now the young woman made herself a public figure by participating in a political event.  She is promoting a particular agenda, and that is state-medicine programs rammed through congress late at night, in which no one has read the law.

Whether or not she was one of the three people who the White House managed to enroll of the thirteen examples of enrollees, she is all for the system.

That system is presently treating her, as one can see as she faints.  See what is on her left arm?


I am sure some doctor can identify the medical device on her left arm.  Again, she is in public, at a publicity event, the device is not hidden whether or not she fell ill, so I don't think I am being invasive.

The question is, it would be interesting for her to offer herself as a case study (which in effect, she already has).  Is she in fact better served by Romney/Obamacare, or by a free market in medicine.

We are not having a conversation about alternatives to solve the problem of medical care, we are arguing whether Romney/Obamacare is good politics.

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Monday, October 21, 2013

Los Angeles Import Export Seminar


If you are in the Los Angeles area, Orange Coast College is hosting me for an all day Seminar on small business international trade start-up, this Saturday 26 Oct, 2013 from 9am to 5pm.  Contact the school to register if you'd like to attend.  The students rate this course highly for pace, content and humor.  I hope to meet you there.

Orange Coast College Community Education
2701 Fairview Road
Costa Mesa, CA 92626
714-432-5154
jwood@occ.cccd.edu
Class Information:   
Importing as a Small Business  
Class Description

Learn how you can become an importer now in a one-day seminar highly rated for the instructor's experience, pace, candor and humor. You will be guided through licensing, selecting products, finding suppliers; working with governments, bankers, brokers, carriers; financing, costing and pricing, and gaining orders for your products. This knowledge becomes the basis for an export business as well.  After the seminar,  help via email with instructor and past students is included. 

Class ID: 14224
Saturday, 9:00 am - 5:00 pm; 1 session starting October 26, 2013, ending October 26, 2013
Tuition: $95.00
Instructor: Spiers
Location: Social Science , Rm. 110       Map
Click here to sign up...

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Media Buys Media

Hi Tech billionaires are piling on investments in the news business, how come?

Pierre M. Omidyar, the founder of eBay, revealed last week that he would back the journalist Glenn Greenwald and his colleagues in a newly conceived news site to the tune of $250 million. Just over two months ago, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, spent the same amount to personally buy The Washington Post. That’s half a billion dollars dropped into serious news production, a sector that investors in distressed assets have been fleeing.
It doesn’t stop there. In July, Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of Steve Jobs, invested in Ozy Media, a news start-up, joining a group that includes the angel investor Ron Conway; Larry Sonsini, a lawyer from an eminent Silicon Valley law firm; Dan Rosensweig of Chegg.com; and David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer.

And this article fails to note Bill Gates has been buying up newspapers, with his friend Warren Buffett. Are these like lawyers and doctors who open wineries as a tax dodge and a consumer item?  No doubt there is plenty of that, since no business is more subsidized and preferred than the news business.

It may very well be there are plenty of synergies to be had and practices for tech firms that can be laundered through media firms.

I thought at first it was just those billionaires wanted the prime real estate that was under those dead businesses.  But this is too many people, too much money.  Look at some trends.  The internet is a bit of a problem for the powers that be.  They used to be able to ramrod programs and wars through on a supine electorate, but now people are catching on and the unelectable are getting elected.

Congress is more frequently addressing whether to legally define a "journalist."  Will there also be a constricting of what is allowed on the internet?  China does it, why not USA?  (USA does it to their employees and our soldiers.)

Practice is showing online advertising does not pay.  When the only people who can pay are deadbeat automakers and the military, bailed-out banks and so on, then maybe something new needs to be rediscovered.  And that is newspaper and magazine display ads.

Do note our economy is doing poorly AND display ads are down.  Have the big money folks figured something out?

I heard the owner of the Seattle Times once note that the inheritance tax killed his newspaper because the small businesses that the State targeted to destroy by the tax were the ones with which the newspapers actually made money.

Does this mean that a decision has been made to stop destroying small business in USA?  Does it mean that we'll be allowed to flourish?  And if so, those investments will pay off handsomely.

I can only hope so.

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Sunday, October 20, 2013

US Constitution Enshrines Slavery

The United States is the only modern country to this day to provide for slavery, protect the institution in law.  And slavery as defined by Dr. Orlando Patterson: the violent, permanent domination of natally alienated and generally dishonest persons.

What the 13th Amendment did was to make a shift from slaves as private property to slaves as public property.  There has never been a time in the history of the United States that slavery was not a part of the law of the land.  To this day.

Before the civil war, the USConstitution provided for slavery.  Up to the 13th amendment private ownership of slaves was protected in the USConstituion, even defining slaves as 3/5ths of a person (But not offering them 3/5ths of the protection of the USConstitution.)

Then there was the Civil War, fought over tariffs, but expanded to include the evil of slavery.  Almost no Southern whites owned slaves, but almost all did not want the Federal Government dictating laws to free states.  Here is the 13th amendment, dictated to the states.
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
The 13th Amendment uses what words are necessary and sufficient to make clear state slavery was now the law, and private slavery no longer protected in law.  The people who wrote the 13th amendment, and those who voted for it, were masters of the English language.  Why is all of this ignored today, and the plain meaning not recognized?

It gets even better (or worse):  The 13th amendment made no provision, nor did any lawmaking body, punishing slaveholding by private individuals.  If they wanted to outlaw slavery, why at the time did they write no laws against slavery?  It actually occurred in court that people who had slaves after the 13th amendment could escape any sanction since there was no statute punishing slave-holding.  The 13th amendment eliminated the protection in law of chattel slavery, private property slaves.  No law was passed punishing slave holding.

This is another example of what is criminal and worth going to war over is acceptable once the Government does it.  If the "slaves" belong to all of us, then it is acceptable.  Ponzi Schemes are no good, unless the government runs them.  Snake oil is wrong, unless the government pushes it.

Now, people say, "well, regardless of what the law says, there was no slavery after the civil war."  Willful self-delusion!  Anyone who believes good can come out of violent effort has not paid attention in life or read history.  Slavery was, has been and is actively extent in the USA today.

I've covered Oshinsky's book here.  The key point in Oshinsky's book was whereas with private slaves, slaveholders generally protected their investment in the slaves, with State ownership of slaves, the state simple worked these costless slaves to death.  Only the state can make the unspeakably bad far worse!

Now that the word is getting out, Regime TV has created a show that embraces, extends and then misinforms.  Here is an 1.5 hour long PBS special you should watch, which ultimately defends the continuance of slavery in USA today.

http://video.pbs.org/video/2176766758/

Ho hum, Slavery was alive and well after the civil war, well into WWII according to the program.  Whew! All over now.  Which of course is nonsense, while you are reading this, there are Americans under slavery today, since our laws allow for it.

Watching this video, you hear "That was then (WWII) this is now, nothing to see here, move along.)" As you watch, note that the program sets a specific World War II date where the practice of slavery ended. But if you were watching the show carefully, and read the 13th amendment for comprehension, then you would understand this point is nonsense.

According to the PBS show, two racist mass murdering slavers were sent to jail during WWII. The fear was that enemy propaganda in WWII might incite USA slaves during WWII to rise up, much as was the fear among slaveholders during our Revolutionary and Civil wars.  But note that these two were private owners of slaves, not agents of public ownership of slaves.

Public ownership continues, as did the abuse form WWII on.  While the show claims slavery ended, at the same time people of some African heritage were being freed for human sacrifice to make the lives of others better, the state was running mad scientist medical experiments on people of African heritage, without their knowledge, in the Tuskegee experiments.  Some of these men, willfully untreated for syphilis, volunteered for active duty on behalf of the United States.  The military doctors rejected them for having syphilis, a disease the victims believed they had specifically been cured.  After come confusion, it was decided the men would continue in the experiment where their syphilis went untreated, and they would not be allowed in the military.  This program went on into the 1970s.  (Nobody made any effort to stop it, and the President of the United States has the right to run any experiments and any USA citizens without their permission.)  Medical Experiments on prisoners is well documented into the 1970s, where the record strangely goes silent, although there is plenty of weird science, such as AIDS, going on.

In the video, descendants express chagrin to find their recent ancestors behaving badly in regards to slavery.  They need not feel guilty, any and all given such power behave the same way.  Even me. The trick is to not give anyone that power.

And further, we will all sell our own down the river, just as Joseph's brothers did.  Irish sell Irish, African, African.  People of African heritage enforced the "back of the bus" Government rules.

Americans of some African heritage cannot understand why they are so hated.  It is simple. We hate those we harm.  And as the relentless genocide of people of African American heritage expands under the cover of Foreman Obama, the hatred only increases.  Those in the commanding heights become murderous in their hatred.

Here again, the only solution is truth commissions.  Violence will not fix it.  Slavery is not gone from USA, it is just getting more subtle.  Student loans cannot be bankrupt, in violation of anti-peonage laws.

We all love a system that works for us.  1 Samuel 8 all over again.

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Ooops... Never Mind That Food Pyramid Thing

Hormone replacement therapy, Thalidomide, Tuskegee Experiments, goodness gracious, too many tragedies to count, and even in fluff stuff they get it wrong:
Four decades of nutrition research funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) may be invalid because the method used to collect the data was seriously flawed, according to a new study by the Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina.
Why not just let the internet replace the "Center for Disease Control"?

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