Beyond Bailouts: Federal Options for Preventing State Budget Crises

More than two years after the official end of the Great Recession, state governments still face significant budget deficits that cannot be addressed without further drastic spending cuts or substantial revenue increases. The structural origins of the ongoing state fiscal crisis are well known. Excessively procyclical revenue structures, combined with spending obligations that increase with economic downturns, have resulted in a budget dynamic for the states that is not sustainable over the long term. The consensus solution to this problem is for states to save money during boom times (via budget stabilization or “rainy day” funds) and to draw on those savings during recessions. Unfortunately, numerous studies have shown that states do not save anywhere close to an adequate amount for this to be an effective strategy. As a result, during each of the past several downturns, states have turned to the federal government for fiscal assistance—often derisively termed “bailouts”—to address fiscal imbalances. Yet these bailouts have their own problems, including creating an incentive for states not to establish adequate rainy day funds, which in turn increases the likelihood of future bailout demands. To escape from this vicious cycle, we propose a set of federal policy reforms to facilitate state savings. We offer a menu of policy options, rather than a single solution, because we argue that existing evidence does not clearly explain why states do not save. Therefore, we first analyze the possible sources of failure and then tailor a number of remedies for each; in nearly all cases, it is clear that states would be unable to overcome the problem on their own, making federal intervention particularly apt

Schreiben des Herrn ProfessorsGalle, Directors der Sternwarte in Breslau, an den Herausgeber

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Secondary bronchial botryomycosis due to foreign body aspiration

Botryomycosis is recognised mainly as a visceral disorder with rare cases of pulmonary manifestation. The most frequent cause of pulmonary Botryomycosis is aspiration of a foreign body which induces bacteria to group together instead of spreading out forming conglomerates resembling the granules of Actinomyces. Here we report on the clinical and pathologic findings of a 38-year-old patient without any further predisposing factors. It should be mentioned that the disease was cured following the extraction of a foreign body without the need for any surgery or antibiotic therapy. Factors influencing the course of the disease are discussed below

Oncolytic Virotherapy as Emerging Immunotherapeutic Modality: Potential of Parvovirus H-1

Human tumors develop multiple strategies to evade recognition and efficient suppression by the immune system. Therefore, a variety of immunotherapeutic strategies have been developed to reactivate and reorganize the human immune system. The recent development of new antibodies against immune check points may help to overcome the immune silencing induced by human tumors. Some of these antibodies have already been approved for treatment of various solid tumor entities. Interestingly, targeting antibodies may be combined with standard chemotherapy or radiation protocols. Furthermore, recent evidence indicates that intratumoral (it) or intravenous (iv) injections of replicative oncolytic viruses such as herpes simplex-, pox-, parvo- or adenoviruses may also reactivate the human immune system. By generating tumor cell lysates in situ, oncolytic viruses overcome cellular tumor resistance mechanisms and induce immunogenic tumor cell death resulting in the recognition of newly released tumor antigens.This is in particular the case of the oncolytic parvovirus H-1 (H-1PV) which is able to kill human tumor cells and stimulate an antitumor immune response through increased presentation of tumor-associated antigens, maturation of dendritic cells and release of proinflammatory cytokines. Current research and clinical studies aim to assess the potential of oncolytic virotherapy and its combination with immunotherapeutic agents or conventional treatments to further induce effective antitumoral immune responses