Month: October 2000

I had this B-School pal who went on to Morgan Stanley and then Lehman Brothers and then came this close to going to jail for insider trading. He pleaded guilty in 1980, but managed to avoid serving time. It was quite a celebrated case. (On the eve of the indictment, he married the daughter of the then chairman of Twentieth Century Fox.)

Now comes news, two decades later, that he is one of 11 defendants in a new insider trading case, this one involving the 1995 takeover of U.S. Shoe. (According to the SEC, it was my old pal’s prior experience with insider-trading investigations that helped him fend this off so long.)

If insider trading is bad — and it is — then why does one guy risk going to jail and another risk becoming President?

Not to say that George W. Bush was ever charged with, let alone convicted of, insider trading. He was not. But here’s what U.S News & World Report, the most conservative of the three national newsweeklies, had to say (March 16, 1992):

“Bush sold [his entire] $828,560 worth of Harken stock just one week before the company posted unusually poor quarterly earnings and Harken stock plunged sharply. Shares lost more than 60% of their value over 6 months. When Bush sold his shares, he was a member of a company committee studying the effect of Harken’s restructuring, a move to appease anxious creditors. According to documents on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission, his position on the Harken committee gave Bush detailed knowledge of the company’s deteriorating financial condition. The SEC received word of Bush’s trade eight month’s late. Bush has said he filed the notice but that it was lost. “

An SEC probe ended without charges being filed.

Now, come on. A coincidence that an insider enmeshed in all this stuff, and on the three-man audit committee, would sell out a week before the bad news hit?

I’m not suggesting that anyone in the SEC might have gone easy on the President’s son . . . but it’s conceivable, no?

Before running for Governor, Bush obtained a letter from the SEC saying that “the investigation has been terminated as to the conduct of Mr. Bush, and that, at this time, no enforcement action is contemplated with respect to him.” According to the Washington Post (July 30, 1999), “Bush took that as vindication. ‘The SEC fully investigated the stock deal,’ he said in October 1994. ‘I was exonerated.’ . . . Hiler, however, was more cautious. His statement said it ‘must in no way be construed as indicating that the party has been exonerated . . . ‘”

Exonerated . . . not exonerated — whatever.

The fact is, I think we should leave all this alone. Bush may not have had a perfect decade or two after college — there may be people serving long prison terms in Texas right now for doing drugs in their youth that the Governor declines to say whether he did when he was young and irresponsible. And perhaps he did engage in blatant insider trading, as the facts would seem to suggest. But I don’t think we should launch $40 million taxpayer-financed multi-year investigations.

The country has truly had enough of the politics of personal destruction.

So let’s leave this stuff alone . . . but on BOTH sides, not just Bush’s.

Was Bush lying when he claimed to have not known about Harken’s impending bad news? I truly don’t know. I like to think not.

I do know it’s inconceivable that Al Gore was “lying” when he said he co-sponsored the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill.

(He should have said “strongly supported,” and that he had “co-sponsored earlier campaign finance reform legislation.” But is that a lie? Gore’s main point: he favors broad campaign finance reform. Which is true. And that the Republicans don’t. Which is one of the many reasons they are trying so hard to tear down his credibility, so he can’t win the election and fight for it.)

Several of you pointed me to Bill Bennett’s op-ed in last Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal in which he actually — repeatedly and directly — called the Vice President a liar. He cited lots of supposed examples to prove his point — like the “co-sponsored” one above. But he omitted three of the most famous: “inventing the Internet,” Love Canal, and Love Story. Why?

My guess is that Bennett — who fancies himself a great judge of virtue — grudgingly recognizes that these juicy, funny, popular charges, which have pulled so well in Republican direct mail, are simply untrue. (By Bennett’s standard, one might even call them lies.) But if that’s the reason he omits them from his op-ed, then what does this say about George W. Bush? Bush has used the Internet line over and over, almost surely knowing that Gore deserves serious praise for his role with the Internet, not ridicule. Bush has allowed his campaign to use the Internet and Love Canal and Love Story as cornerstones in their effort to suggest that — just as Jerry Ford was a klutz (he wasn’t) and Dan Quayle was an idiot (he isn’t) — Al Gore is a untrustworthy. Well, I don’t buy it, and neither should you.

I would not argue that Ford was the most sure-footed man ever to hold office, although he was apparently a hell of a college football player. And you’ll never find me arguing that Dan Quayle is a genius — or that Al Gore is a man who never gets a fact wrong, embellishes a story, or fudges when he’s put on the defensive. But I’d argue that Quayle is certainly as bright as Governor Bush, and that Vice President Gore is certainly as honest as Governor Bush. It’s just that their honesty takes different forms.

Gore is honest — indeed, impassioned — on the big, substantive stuff: He strongly favors campaign finance reform. He wants to avoid squandering a large chunk of the hoped-for surplus on a big tax cut for the top 1%. He wants your parents and grandparents to be able to get the prescription drugs they need and still be able to eat. He wants smaller class sizes. He wants to see America ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. He wants to raise the minimum wage. He wants to draw on the talents of all Americans, including openly gay and lesbian Americans. He wants women to retain the right to choose. And so on.

Around the edges, he is sometimes too quick to assert something that, on reflection, is misstated, like saying “co-sponsor” instead of “support” — or saying he flew with James Lee Witt to inspect the Texas floods.

Geez, what a whopper that was! According to Margaret Carlson in last week’s Time, the VP toured the floods with FEMA’s regional director, not James Lee Witt himself . . . although he had gone on 17 other trips with Witt to disaster areas. Bill Bennett is outraged! How can we trust a man who mixed up which disaster trip was with which FEMA official? It wasn’t Witt at all on that trip! It was a different FEMA guy!

Some of the “gotchas” around which the Bush folks have tried to undermine Gore’s credibility are simply false, like the three famous ones Bennett omitted. Some are technically true but trivial, like the co-sponsor thing. The Buddhist temple? Read the recent extensive New Yorker story. You will find in it no reason to withhold your vote from Gore.

Bush, by contrast, never exaggerates or misspeaks or gets defensive on the small stuff. Well, he does, of course — we all do — but with him the presumption is it’s just innocent human error. (So what if he says we have to step up exploration in Mexico to decrease our dependence on foreign oil? Or if he says “this man has outspent me” when it’s simply untrue.)

What matters in this election are basically two things:

• First, competence. (And, please: does anyone think Bush is the more competent of the two? Sure, he’ll turn to his running mate and to his cabinet secretaries to tell him what to do — but what if they disagree? Then who decides? In a dangerous world, this is not a trivial question.)

• Second, issues. And that is where I believe the Vice President is being forthright and the Governor gets into trouble.

Gore is attempting to alert the voters to the fact that Bush’s tax plan is too large (Alan Greenspan has agreed with that) and too heavily weighted toward the wealthy (John McCain has agreed with that). These charges are true and they are important, and Bush just brushes them off as “fuzzy math.” That’s dishonest. And in a very fundamental, substantive way.

The money Bush would direct toward eliminating the estate tax for the top 2%, and for slashing their income tax — nice though these cuts would be — would divert hundreds of billions of dollars from things that most voters would agree are more urgent.

Bush does everything he can not to be honest about this. He could say, “Hell, yes, 30% of my tax cuts would go to people who make more than $1 million a year. But those people work hard. And I believe life has been too tough on them these last 8 years. I want to do something for these people.” He could say, “Yes, most of my tax cut would go to the people at the top, but they pay the most taxes, so why not? You’ll still get something, too.”

He could say, “It’s true Gore’s budget calls for twice the increase in spending on military procurement that mine does. But somehow I’ll still do it better.” Instead, he makes it sound as if, even after his big tax cut, he’ll be able to devote more resources to the military than Gore. How?

C’mon, guys. The only fuzzy math here — like the old voodoo economics that cut taxes for the rich and swelled our National Debt by $4 trillion — is trying to make people think that lowering Steve Forbes’s taxes by millions doesn’t wind up taking those millions from someplace else. Like defense or health care for kids or prescription drugs for seniors.

Nor is it only economics where he’s being less than forthright. From the exchange in last week’s debate, you’d never know that Bush promised religious conservatives he wouldn’t knowingly hire gays or lesbians (the previous Bush administration didn’t either). Or that he supports the Texas law under which his running mate’s daughter could be imprisoned for loving her chosen partner in the privacy of their own bedroom. Or that in the wake of the James Byrd, Jr., dragging-to-death, he was prepared to sign a Texas hate crimes statute — but only so long as it didn’t cover gays or lesbians.

My bottom line is that both men are decent folks who love their families and their country. But that Gore is every bit as honorable and principled as his opponent. Perhaps, when you consider the seriousness with which he has devoted his life to public service, and the seriousness with which he has thought through economic, environmental and foreign policy issues, he is even more so.

Perhaps his having the guts to enlist in the Army, with no assurance he would not see combat — enlisted men do not choose their own assignments — should count for something more than ridicule from the guy who stayed home to defend Texas. (Personally, I would not have had the courage to enlist or to fly a fighter plane — I had a high draft number — so my hat is off to both of them.)

So enough with the character assassination. And who cares how good or bad the VP’s make-up is tonight? The world faces serious challenges in the years ahead.

Do you want at the helm, as we chart our course into the future, the guy who really did take the lead in Congress championing what would become the Internet? Or do you want the guy who deliberately twists this achievement into a cheap laugh?

Do you want Trent Lott un-vetoed? Jesse Helms un-vetoed? A dramatically more conservative Supreme Court over the next 25 years? If so, Bush is your man. But, please: not because he’s of higher moral character. He is not. And neither is Bill Bennett.

I spent all weekend raising money when I was supposed to be writing my column. Sorry! The one I planned to do for today will probably be tomorrow.

In the meantime:

RADIO MOSCOW

Mark: “Listen to radio stations from around the world! Fun site!”

☞ I got to the site with no trouble and found lots of Portuguese, Russian and Malay stations to listen to. Simply select one, click PLAY, and — if you’re old and stupid, like me — you get silence and: PAGE CANNOT BE DISPLAYED. But I have no time to listen anyway, so I’m OK with this.

TAX-LOSS SELLING

Bad Timing: “I recently started building my own portfolio of stocks. This is purely a long-term investment strategy. Unfortunately for me I acquired most of the stocks (including Intel, Cisco, IBM and Microsoft) before the recent tech thrashing. I am tempted to sell these stocks and take the (significant) capital losses and then buy them back in thirty days under the theory that it seems extremely doubtful that they will be able to make up those losses over that 30 day time period. Is this a good idea?”

☞ If the commissions are low, and you wait 31 days to avoid the IRS “wash sale” rule, that would disallow the losses otherwise, it’s a good idea. There is a real chance the stocks will have rallied and you’ll regret it. But I’d say there is an equal chance they will have slumped further, with more tax selling. So from the standpoint of logic this could work.

Or do this: Sell some of your issues now and use the proceeds to double up on the others. Wait 31 days. Buy back the ones you sold; sell the original shares you doubled up on. That way, unless you’re really unlucky, you’ll likely net out much of the effect of market movements. (If the market jumps, you’ll do well enough on the ones you doubled up on to make up for the ones you sold and now have to buy back at higher prices.)

YET ANOTHER REASON TO LOVE BARNES& NOBLE
Long-time readers know I have plugged Honest Tea from time to time, not least because I am one of this itty-bitty firm’s itty-bitty backers. (Expect a spider to emerge in this imagery at any moment.) Honest Tea is not for the corn syrup or high-octane-caffeine crowd, but it continues to win awards (yes! there are awards for iced tea!) and to make itty-bitty progress. Most recently, Barnes & Noble has begun stocking it in all 400 of its cafes. I’m told it has already shown up in New York and will be arriving nationwide in the next couple of weeks. If you like cinnamon, try the Gold Rush. (“An herbal cinnamon infusion with rooibush, rosehips, chamomile, cinnamon, peppermint, ginger, orange peel and natural flavors. Brewed in spring water with a touch of raw cane sugar and malic acid, caffeine-free.”) Like ginger? Well, naturally, the Jakarta Ginger. I’m a fool for the Moroccan, Kashmiri Chai and First Nation. Not crazy about the Black Forest Berry, but that’s just me.

I am very hopeful the stock market will quickly rebound “as it always does,” and that the euphoria will resume “because it’s different this time.” But it doesn’t feel that way. (Of course, it never does when the market’s fallen sharply.) In the old days, long bull markets were followed by not-brief bear markets. And long economic booms were followed by recessions.

Every seasoned investor knows that “it’s different this time” are the four most dangerous words in the English language, but you may have seen one brokerage firm’s current TV ads actually concluding: “It is different this time.” And maybe it is.

Yes, we’re the world’s only superpower, which takes away some of the uncertainty, and gives the world something of a leg up for “stability” — always a good thing for financial markets. It also means our defense budget can remain at a relatively low percentage of our GNP compared to its decades-long Cold War level. That frees up perhaps 3% of our GNP for more productive pursuits (i.e., devoting more like 3% than of 6% of our GDP to defense). In that sense, “it’s different this time.”

But how many superpowers rivaled our strength between World War I and World War II (none, I think), and how good was our economy, with its relatively low defense expenditures, then? (I’m no historian, so if I’m off base on this, let me know.)

And, yes, the breakthroughs in technology are beyond dazzling. But it’s possible to wonder just how profits will be squeezed out of all this to enrich investors. Price competition, which is terrific for consumers and efficiency, is tough on profits. What will be the model by which you and I finally pay for all this wonderful Internet stuff we enjoy? Where will the profits come from to support all the players and justify even today’s stock prices?

(There was a time in the last century — like, say, four years ago — that 10,000 on the Dow would have seemed more a fantasy than a floor.)

I truly don’t know what will happen, and I am immensely optimistic about the decades to come. I may never be able to make myself invisible or fly like Superman — next to immortality, the top of my wish list — but short of that, almost anything now seems possible.

But that doesn’t mean Goldman Sachs guru Abby Joseph Cohen is correct in predicting we’ll soon be back to record highs. Then again, the last time I doubted her, on “Face the Nation,” I was wrong and she was right.

I recognize that I’m not giving you much guidance here. But I do know that the sorts of valuations that peaked in April, and that I have been making fun of for some time, were absurdly high. And I also know that the stock market tends sooner or later to go to both extremes, and that we are nowhere near absurdly low prices and despair. (Not that the bearish extreme is necessarily the next stop on the market’s journey, though it might be.)

So you still shouldn’t mess with margin. You should still pay off your car loan and credit cards before investing a dime in stocks. You should still search for value, if you choose stocks yourself, or else continue your steady program of investing a regular amount every month in two or three carefully chosen, no-load, low expense mutual funds. (Index funds are usually best.) The further the market tanks, the better you can feel about buying new shares “on sale.” And if it snaps back to old highs, better still. Either way — especially if you are young enough to have time on your side — you can find a reason to be pleased.

Monday: Which Candidate Can You Really Trust? (I Read Bill Bennett; Now — Fair’s Fair — You Gotta Read This)

The debate: Don’t get me started. Suffice it to say that Houston really IS smoggy, that Bush really DOES oppose the Hate Crimes statute, and that Gore’s characterization of Bush’s tax proposal is ACCURATE, while Bush’s characterization of it is disingenuous at best. And now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Things can change a lot in a few months.

Yahoo was down another 17 or so yesterday, to 65. Here’s what I wrote about it on January 4, under the headline, Yahoo! The stock was just touching its all-time high of $500 (which became $250 once it split).

This is really getting exciting. Yahoo was up $42 yesterday, to $475 a share – its market cap is now $125 billion. If it quadruples again this year and next, it will be the first $2 trillion company. (So far, the world’s highest market cap goes to Microsoft, at around $600 billion.) Yahoo earned a solid 25 cents a share in the most recent 12 months, so who says earnings are the kiss of death for an Internet company?

Needless to say, paying $475 for an annual earnings stream of, most recently, 25 cents, seems high. Would you give me $475 if I promised to give you 25 cents a year? Would you liquidate all your assets and give me $475,000 if I promised to give you $250 a year?

But it’s not the 25 cents that has people excited. Obviously.

First Union analyst Carolyn Luther Trabuco rates the stock a strong buy at $475 – it’s cheap here! – because, according to CBS/Marketwatch, she thinks it should hit $600 in the next 12 months. What has her excited is her expectation that revenues for this past quarter will come in at $190 million. And she has upped her earnings-per-share forecast by a full penny, to 16 cents for the quarter just ended from the 15 cents she had previously anticipated. Multiply those quarterly sales and earnings expectations by four, and you have the company now selling for 164 times annual sales and 742 times annual earnings.

But of course the point is that Yahoo sales and earnings will keep growing. Otherwise, why would you pay $475 for a claim on 16 cents in quarterly earnings? You could get $8 a quarter right now from a federally-insured bank certificate of deposit.

(For those slow at math: $8 is a larger amount of money than 16 cents.)

Right now, Yahoo is valued at significantly more than Ford and General Motors, combined. Toss in Dow Jones (which owns, among other things, the Wall Street Journal) . . . and Yahoo is still considered the greater prize. Only when you toss in the New York Times Company, too, does the market consider the two baskets – Basket A, containing Yahoo, and Basket B, containing Ford, GM, Dow Jones and the New York Times Company – about equal in value.

Carolyn Luther Trabuco thinks this is ridiculous. Within a year, she thinks, Yahoo will have added another 26% in market value, leaving Basket B in the dirt.

And the way things are going, I wouldn’t be surprised.

With a lot of us licking various wounds these days, there is at least some fun in looking back on the folly. For those of you with a taste for it, here’s what I had written a few days earlier, December 27, about Internet Capital. ICGE closed at 12 yesterday, down from a post-split high of 212. And here was the next day’s column about Priceline. PCLN is down from a high of 104 to around 5.

Nor is it only the Internet stocks. Have you ever tried my little Scale? (You can get to it by clicking SCALE in the middle of the bar above this column.) A while back, I used it to point out how Dell was being valued by Wall Street at more than Ford, General Motors and United Airlines combined. Today, Dell is still worth $60 billion — not nothing. But at $23 a share, down from $59 earlier this year, and selling at “just” 35 times its past year’s earnings, it has reentered the earth’s atmosphere.

Of course, it’s far easier being right than rich. I did make money shorting some of these stocks, but probably lost even more shorting others too early. (In theory, I could have just ridden out the storm. But you’d be surprised how one’s nerve buckles when one is losing $20,000 a day and seasoned 28-year-old analysts at venerable Wall Street investment banking houses are raising their target prices 100 points at a time.)

But never mind me — the questions on your mind (I’d wager) are:

☞ Well, are these stocks buys now?

Mmmm . . . no. Some of them may survive and even rebound, but most of them will, at the very least, have to suffer months’ more “consolidation,” as it is known, and tax-selling pressure.

☞ What’s wildly overpriced, ripe to be shorted, now?

My current albatross is a company called Juniper, which makes the Internet backbone that will be central to the future of civilization. At 206, it’s not quite 15% off its all-time high, up from 35 earlier in the year — a respectable gain in a difficult year — and though it has very little in the way of sales, it is currently valued at more than General Motors, Apple, Amazon and the New York Times Company, combined. A Juniper fan tells me he expects that the company will soon show the fastest ramp up from zero to $5 billion in sales in the history of the world, and I don’t doubt it. Juniper is, from what I can tell, and all kidding aside, a very fine, exciting, company. But even assuming 100% of the $5 billion is profit — with no overhead, expenses or taxes — I’m not sure the company is currently worth its $60 billion market valuation.

Because if this is such a phenomenally profitable business, won’t others try somehow to come in and compete? The barriers to entry are very high. But if little JNPR was able to enter when Cisco was the only player, might Lucent or IBM or someone be able to compete with Juniper?

The truth is, I don’t know. I can’t even get my DSL line work, let alone predict the future of the communications industry. Which is why I try to make measured bets. (And why I generally lose money shorting stocks, as you will, too, if you try this.) My world won’t end if Juniper soars still further.

The truth is, Juniper may one day be valued more highly not just than GM, Apple, Amazon, and the New York Times Company, combined, as now, but more highly than all those plus (are you ready?) Federal Express, Ford, AT&T, Kodak, Yahoo, and the entire U.S. airline industry.

Why not? Cisco already is.

For a while all they could talk about was the kiss. Prescription drug benefits and a patients’ bill of rights? Very nice. Paying down the debt to keep mortgage and auto loan rates low and the economy humming? Lovely. But did you see that kiss? Awesome!

Now all they can talk about is the sighing, which I admit was unfortunate. (One of you wrote to me that the first debate was a case of “the overbearing versus the overwhelmed.”)

Few question the VP’s competence for the job.

Few dispute that the last eight years have been really good.

Few think Al Gore’s choice of running-mate sent anything but the best signals.

But what about the sighs?

(Having been in a couple of debates over auto insurance reform, where the other side was spectacularly misleading the audience by, in effect, calling the facts “fuzzy math,” I have made the same mistake. It’s a hard reflex to quash.)

More to the point, what about the lies? And this is where the other side makes me truly crazy, because it turns out that, if anyone has been deliberately misleading the public, it’s the other side.

This is not to say that the VP has not occasionally misspoken or exaggerated in the telling of a story — who hasn’t? But that’s a million miles from the kind of picture the Bush folks are skillfully — one might almost say cynically — attempting to paint.

Let’s start with the Internet. It is now well known among those who follow these things — and must surely be known within the Bush campaign — that the Vice President never said he invented the Internet. He . . . just . . . never . . . said . . . it.

He did claim to have been the Internet’s champion in Congress — and that was true.

If you doubt this, I offer you Robert Parry’s now pretty famous article in the Washington Monthly. Or consider the words of Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf, who did invent the Internet:

“No one person or even small group of persons exclusively ‘invented’ the Internet. It is the result of many years of ongoing collaboration among people in government and the university community. But as the two people who designed the basic architecture and the core protocols that make the Internet work, we would like to acknowledge VP Gore’s contributions as a Congressman, Senator and as Vice President. No other elected official, to our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time.”

☞ That would seem to be a good thing, no? Deserving of respect?

“Last year,” Kahn and Cerf continue, “the Vice President made a straightforward statement on his role. He said: ‘During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the Internet.’ We don’t think, as some people have argued, that Gore intended to claim he ‘invented’ the Internet. Moreover, there is no question in our minds that while serving as Senator, Gore’s initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving Internet. The fact of the matter is that Gore was talking about and promoting the Internet long before most people were listening. . . . As far back as the 1970s Congressman Gore promoted the idea of high speed telecommunications as an engine for both economic growth and the improvement of our educational system. . . . Though easily forgotten, now, at the time this was an unproven and controversial concept.”

☞ What good was George W. doing for anyone in the 1970s?

“When the Internet was still in the early stages of its deployment, Congressman Gore provided intellectual leadership by helping create the vision of the potential benefits of high speed computing and communication. . . . No one in public life has been more intellectually engaged in helping to create the climate for a thriving Internet than the Vice President. Gore has been a clear champion of this effort . . . “

I go on at such length — and quote Kahn and Cerf at such length — because this is important. The other side has taken something truly praiseworthy and consciously twisted it into character assassination.

Is that not a big deal?

What does that say about the other side?

To me it says that they see no other way to regain power and enact multi-million-dollar tax cuts for the wealthiest Republicans.

Ah, you say, but there’s so much smoke here, there must be fire. What about the famous Buddhist temple? If you read Jeffrey Toobin’s extensive article in the New Yorker last month (sorry, not on-line), you’ll find out that the Vice President seems to have done nothing wrong.

And Love Canal? He never said he discovered Love Canal. His comments to a group of students were misreported by the pool reporter. They went around the world, exposing Gore to Republican ridicule — to the dismay of the students who heard him with their own ears, and who got a lesson in just how unfair the world can be — before eventually, in much smaller type, being corrected. And yet the ridicule continued. (The Love Canal episode was documented extensively in the March, 2000 Brill’s Content and elsewhere.)

And Love Story? The VP told a couple of reporters on Air Force Two that author Erich Segal had once told a Tennessee newspaper that he and Tipper had been models for characters in Love Story. Well, the newspaper article did quote Segal saying that! And apparently one of the characters in Love Story was based partly on Al Gore (though the other was not in fact based on Tipper).

Well, then, how about the abortion flip-flop? Journalist Mickey Kaus looked into this one and concluded it was “mostly a bum rap.”

The Union Label lullaby? He was kidding. It was a funny way of saying, “I’m with you guys.” But quoted without the smile or the laughter, it can be used as “yet another example” of something that most of the other examples weren’t examples of, either.

Yes, he said he co-sponsored the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill — clearly wrong, since, by the time it was introduced, he was already out of the Senate and VP. But he supported the bill, and had earlier co-sponsored other campaign finance reform bills. So in hindsight, of course, he should have said “supported” rather than “co-sponsored.” Is this slip even remotely newsworthy?

And the fundraising phone calls? No controlling legal authority? Not a winning turn of phrase, to be sure. But the law he was accused of violating had been written before there were telephones, back when fundraising solicitations were face to face and it was considered a bad idea to shake down government employees for contributions on the job. How would calling some rich out-of-town donors from his office relate to this? Yes, it would have been better if the calls had been made elsewhere. But isn’t the larger issue here that we badly need campaign finance reform? And that Gore has pledged to make McCain-Feingold the very first bill he submits to Congress? And that Bush opposes it?

Then you have, from the first debate, the Sarasota school kid standing at the back of the class with no desk. Apparently, unbeknownst to the visitors, she did later get a desk. But was this a willful deception? Or simply a way to communicate something completely true and crucially important: far too many of our classrooms are run down and wildly overcrowded. I had two tenants who taught in the Miami public school system. They told me repeatedly, before they quit, how awful the conditions were, with some classes being conducted in trailers with 35 or 40 kids — an impossible number to teach effectively. I’m told the Sarasota classroom the VP visited was designed for 24 and had to accommodate 36. The child’s father has spoken up to support the VP’s message.

Accompanying James Witt to a fire? Clearly, Gore goofed in saying this, and I don’t know why. But I’ll bet you the VP has been to a lot of disaster scenes, and that he has flown with James Witt. So maybe in the heat of the moment — and, yes, overeager to score a debating point — the two melded in his mind.

Again, I’m not saying the Vice President is perfect. In front of a camera or yet another audience of strangers, he sometimes gets stiff or pedantic or awkward or defensive or perhaps overly competitive. I wish he didn’t and I have no doubt he wishes he didn’t. But this is a fine, loving man with a great sense of humor, a deep sense of justice, an abiding commitment to make the world a better place, and exceptional competence to do the job.

So the most self-interested thing you can do — though it’s hard — is to try to ignore the stuff that really doesn’t matter very much (what was with that makeup?) and attempt instead to figure out which guy wants what you want.

If you want Roe v. Wade overturned, vote for Bush. If you want it preserved, vote for Gore.

If you want the wealthiest sliver of Americans to get a big tax cut that even John McCain says is too heavily weighted in favor of the rich, vote for Bush. If you want a more modest tax cut targeted mainly at the middle — leaving that much more money to pay down the debt, beef up the military, help seniors buy prescription drugs, and fund a cushion for emergencies — vote for Gore.

If you’re proud that the United States nixed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty that Clinton and the leaders of 152 other nations signed, vote for Bush. If you favor ratification, vote for Gore.

If you like the idea of Jesse Helms “un-vetoed,” vote for Bush. If you would rather Helms were checked and balanced, vote for Gore.

If you sided with the Republicans in opposing an increase in the minimum wage, vote for Bush. If you were glad to see it raised, vote for Gore.

If you feel the Brady bill was a mistake and the gun-show loophole needs to be preserved, vote for Bush. If you think guns are as dangerous as automobiles and should be subject to reasonable regulation, vote for Gore.

If you think two white, Texas oil men care deeply about issues of diversity and inclusion, and protecting the environment, vote for Bush. If you think Gore is more comfortable drawing on the talents of all Americans, and that he has a deeper understanding of the kinds of environmental challenges our planet faces, vote for Gore.

I could go on, but I fear I’m becoming a little pedantic and overbearing myself.

If you want some fun, click here to read it the Molly Ivins way. (Her Monday, October 9 column, in case it scrolls off.) Forward it to everyone you know.

GURU NET

No one’s opinion is better considered than Walt Mossberg’s, at the Wall Street Journal, so when he recommended GuruNet last week, I tried it. Not surprisingly, Walt’s right again: Took no time to install and less to learn. Now, whether in an e-mail or on the net or anywhere, just point to a word or name you want to know about and “Alt-Click.” Seconds later, you know what prestidigitation means, what a coup de grâce is, what NGO stands for, or who Disraeli was. Amazing and wonderful.

MACRO EXPRESS

This one is a little harder to get up and running, but only a little, and I’ve used it with great success for more than a year since Joe Cherner first turned me on to it. You can download it and use it free for 30 days; beyond that, it’s $35. Basically, MacroExpress lets you assign “hot keys” and “short keys” that will spare you typing things the long way, and automate tasks you do frequently. I’m too stupid to have figured out the second part of it — who has time to figure out how to save all this time? But the first part is very helpful. Instead of typing my address, I type zzF and out pops my Florida address, whether in my word processor or e-mail or anywhere else. Instead of typing the disclosure statement about political contributions, I type zzP and out it pours. There’s much more to it than this, but you get the idea.

QUICK BROWSE

I own part of this one, as many of you know; but it’s free, so I don’t feel too bad telling you it’s gotten still better. Just type qb.com (your browser should supply the rest) and you’ll find tools that let you search or browse the web much more easily. Under SELECTIONS, you can (for example) pull together a daily one-click feed of your favorite comic strips or customize a page from sites on your favorite football team. Under NEWSSTAND you can design your own e-newspaper in under 30 seconds and have it delivered to you at will. SEARCH lets you see the first page or two of hits from all the search engines you like to use, without having to go from one to the next. Finally, MY QUICKBROWSE gives you the tools to combine any set of web pages into one long one, viewed once, or delivered to you on a schedule of your choosing. Not bad for free. You can even win a Palm Pilot by telling friends about Quickbrowse.

As you know, you can now view my past columns in Quickbrowse Mode, as well. A good use of your time? No! But at least with QB, you’ll waste time faster.

Meanwhile, QB hit the New York Times’ Navigator list yesterday — first on its list of “new additions.” And for those of you who read Arabic, you’ll see an article explaining how Quickbrowse can be used to get around oppressive government censorship.

QB is still in its infancy, but it’s amazing to see how much Marc Fest and his small crew have accomplished on a budget of about 18 cents. It’s used from New York to New Delhi, from Maine to Marrakech.

Tomorrow: A Kiss Is Just a Kiss, A Sigh is Just a Sigh

John Hendricks: “I may be the only Republican on the Hill who reads your column. I understand your election year enthusiasm for the VP. But despite your partisan full disclosure, I still think you’re missing the mark about Republican tax cuts. I remember my economics coursework at UCLA well enough to understand one’s fear about inflationary pressure if tax cuts return more cash to circulation. But according to numbers released today by the Speaker’s office, the sum of the current Congressional tax reduction proposals only add up to $531.5 billion…that’s just 11.6% of the entire budget surplus. I know that Bush is advocating for somewhat more, but surely neither of these are as “massive” as you and your party repeatedly insist. The real point we Republicans want to make is that the money belongs to the taxpayers anyway, and not to the government.”

☞ But so does the debt, no? Doesn’t that also belong to us? So why not do the conservative, formerly-Republican, thing and pay it off?

And with whatever tax cuts you do enact — Bush’s is pegged at well over $1 trillion over 10 years, which is MUCH more than 11.6% of the hoped-for surplus — why skew them to the most politically powerful who need them least? At some point, doesn’t the ever-widening gap between the rich and the middle become embarrassing or unhealthy? This is a very gray area, I know. But my own sense of it is that a small cut for the rich would be dandy — I’d love the 3.6% “millionaire’s” surcharge to kick in at, say, $500K instead of $250K . . . that would be a delightful $9,000 soupcon for the rich, enough for an exceptionally nice weekend in Paris. And I’d love to see the estate tax ceiling lifted to $5 million, so all but the tiniest fortunate few can just forget about it. But more than that? Not fair. It’s your taxes that should be lowered, not mine. Sorry.

Steve Gilbert: “I have a slightly more reasonable death penalty proposal than Steve Meyer’s Wheel of Misfortune: Given that in our democracy treason is the most heinous crime (and the first federal death-eligible crime), and that the bribery of public officials is arguably only one step below treason, why not add bribery of an elected official to the list of crimes punishable by death? Like that other Steve, I’m opposed to the death penalty. (As an appellate lawyer who represents indigent defendants, I know that our legal system is not sufficiently trustworthy to make me comfortable with its making decisions that can never be corrected.) While I recognize that there is no chance that such a proposal would be adopted, I’ve thought that it would be interesting to see what would happen if it were a ballot proposition here in California. Do you think that the many pols who have run on the pro-capital punishment bandwagon might have a different opinion if it were proposed that their friends and colleagues and contributors faced the ultimate penalty? ”

David D’Antonio: “Steve’s Wheel of Misfortune is totally unConstitutional, since it’s ‘cruel and unusual’ punishment, almost by definition. Justice isn’t quite that much of a lottery yet! My idea on how to deal with capital punishment is to require everyone who is involved in recommending or sentencing someone to die (so that’s the judge and the prosecutor and/or the jury itself) to sign a pledge that if the defendant is EVER found innocent, they will die as well. For most people, this changes the rules from ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ to ‘beyond ANY doubt’ which is a good thing to me, since you can’t undo an execution. You can’t really undo several years in prison, either, but you can attempt to compensate someone anyway. No so with capital punishment.”

Vince: “I found today’s article very disappointing (and downright frightening). Maybe it’s because I’m a lawyer who has worked on criminal cases, but I can’t imagine anyone making light (Steve is making light, right?) of topics as serious as the death penalty and white-collar crime. As the statistics indicate, the current system is laden with racism. In addition, many “white collar” cases are far from innocuous, particularly when hard working low and middle income people are bilked of their entire life savings and/or pensions. None of this should be treated in such a tongue and cheek manner.“

LIFE INSURANCE

Beth: “I am trying to get my life insurance organized and get the most for my money. This is what I currently have: 1. Variable life insurance thru Prudential (held since age 19 and I’m now 35) with a yearly premium of $210.50, a current death benefit of $30,291 and a cash value of $3401. 2. Flexible premium adjustable life thru Federated (held for 3 years) with a yearly premium of $386.28, a death benefit of $100,000 and no current cash value. My question is that I wonder if I am getting the most for my money with these or if I should surrender these policies and get term life insurance which is less expensive. I have a quote from Kemper for a 20 year fixed premium of $165 for a death benefit of $150,000. This is considerably less than what I am paying now. I have every intention of being committed to investing the difference in either a Roth IRA or mutual fund. I am married, have three children and work part time and therefore definitely need to have decent life insurance coverage.”

☞ Well, I think it’s pretty terrific that after 16 years of the greatest bull market in the history of the world, Prudential has been able to turn the $3,368 in premiums you’ve paid into $3,401 of cash value — an increase of more than $30, or nearly $2 a year — at the same time as they were able to provide you with $30,000 in life insurance coverage. Women between the ages of 19 and 35 are, after all, such a high-risk group.

Forgive my sarcasm, but it makes me angry you’ve been so ill-served. I think you should cash in the Prudential policy, drop the other one as well, and shop around for whatever amount of inexpensive term coverage you think you need. If you are in good health, you can get a 20-year fixed rate $500,000 policy for not much above $300. (Go to quicken.com and you’ll see.) And, yes, a Roth IRA is a fine thing to fund.

U GOTTA TRY THIS

That was the subject heading of Don Trivette’s e-mail — U GOTTA TRY THIS — and the truth is, you do. It’s so . . . different! I didn’t get very deep into it, but with a little clicking you will find yourself in a two-dimensional play-pen. Try one of the demo creatures first, then modify it or build one of your own. Watch him lumber clumsily around; switch off gravity and watch him flail in space; reverse gravity and watch him crawl along the ceiling. This is a total waste of time. You gotta try it.