A Real Estate Correction and One Other November 12, 2002February 22, 2017 THIS FAX SAYS IT ALL It snuck through in between the time I connected the phone line to send a fax and my pressing SEND. Damn, spam’s fast. Anyway, here was the nub of it, from an outfit called Union Trust Mortgage: Qualifying start rates as low as 3.95% Finance up to 107% on purchases Bankruptcy OK! Foreclosure OK! Low and no documentation loans If you have been turn down [sic], call us! “Great Credit?” The 3.95% introductory rate is for you. “Bruised Credit?” Try one of our 90% loan-to-value “no income and no asset verification” loans. My point is: This is a little scary. What happens to the real estate market when the folks who take these loans can’t make the payments and the lender has to foreclose? What happens if interest rates rise and the monthly homeownership costs rise apace? And why (while I’m asking you stuff) do people wash towels? Does anyone use a towel before entering the shower? No, it is used when, emerging, you are as clean as you’ll ever be! It is a conundrum. But not the real estate market. One of these days, we’re going to have a correction. And speaking of corrections . . . CORRECTION: LEWIS AND CLARK – A GOOD EFFORT, BUT NOT FIRST I made reference last week to the travails of Lewis and Clark, as recounted in the Stephen Ambrose biography, Undaunted Courage. I said they had been the first white men to make their way West all the way across the continent to the Pacific. Piffle, responded Peter Ludemann: “I think you’ll find that Alexander Mackenzie beat Lewis and Clark by a few years.. . . Not to denigrate what Lewis and Clark did (having worked summers in the woods, I know how tough it is even with modern gear), but please give credit for ‘first’ where it’s due.” ☞ Perhaps it was e-mails like this that drove Lewis, at the age of 35, to shoot himself in the head. (And when that didn’t work, to pick up his other pistol and shoot himself in the chest. And when that left him still breathing, to begin cutting himself with a razor.) A sad end to an amazing life.
Overview (And See: REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES) November 11, 2002February 22, 2017 IRAQ This is good news. There is a world of difference between our attacking unilaterally, as first proposed, and gaining, as we now have, the unanimous support of the 15-member UN Security Council (including Syria) to send inspectors in for one last attempt at disarming Iraq before resorting to force. Kudos to cooler heads on both sides of the aisle and around the world who moved the administration to this vastly more prudent, defensible course. PRODUCTIVITY One thing is certain: Productivity is the key. Even Lenin said so. You can’t have prosperity without productivity, no matter what your economic system. Inefficiency impoverishes us all. Less certain is how to measure productivity gains accurately from quarter to quarter (and how to distribute its fruits sensibly and equitably), but for what it’s worth – and these things have a way of being revised long after the fact – Thursday brought word that productivity for the third quarter was up 4% from the quarter before. This, too, is good news. TERRORISM Here, of course, we have very little idea of how we’re doing. Are the threats as great as we are led to believe? Less great? Even greater? Have we foiled numerous deadly plots? I don’t know. One of the reasons we missed September 11 and worry about missing future nightmares is the simple lack of translators to analyze the intelligence we gather. Something as basic and mundane as that. ‘Which makes it all the more shocking,’ writes Professor Nathaniel Frank in the November 18 New Republic (sorry, not linkable) ‘that, in a two-month period this fall, the Defense Language Institute (DLI)-an elite training school for military linguists in Monterey, California-discharged seven fully competent Arabic linguists. The reason? They were discovered to be gay.’ This is good news if you subscribe to Jerry Falwell’s view that September 11 was God’s way of punishing America for its pagans and homosexuals; maybe this will persuade Him to punish Saudi Arabia for a change. It’s bad news if you think we’re short of talent in the intelligence agencies. THE ELECTION It was another razor-thin margin. If Paul Wellstone’s plane hadn’t crashed and 24,000 votes (out of 79 million cast nationwide) had gone for Jean Carnahan in Missouri (or even fewer for Jeanne Shaheen in New Hampshire), the Democrats would still control the Senate. Instead, the nation remains pretty evenly divided, but that is not reflected in the government. It is now more or less controlled in all three branches by the right wing of the Republican Party. This may be good news for stocks, at least in the short run. It holds out the hope for continued lax regulation of business and the possibility of lower capital gains rates (and/or a higher annual allowance for deducting losses), which would make the real after-tax return from owning stocks higher – which, in turn, in theory, would make them more valuable today. Balancing this or perhaps even outweighing it is the prospect of increasing deficits, which could lead to a weak dollar, inflation and higher interest rates, and an ever increasing gap between the rich and everybody else. I know some of you will immediately fire up your e-mails to explain that the lower the tax rates, the more tax is collected (never mind the $3 trillion we added to the national debt under Reagan/Bush) . . . and all the rest. But go see Real Women Have Curves and let me know whether, at the end of the day, you find yourself sympathizing more with the plight of Mrs. Glass, who runs Glitz Industries, or with the seamstresses who make her clothes. We had a pretty good balance (or perhaps I should say imbalance) between the two of them in the last administration. But this administration surveyed the landscape and decided that the plight of the Mrs. Glass’s of the world cried out for trillions of dollars in relief, even if it meant a rougher road for the low- and middle-income crowd. (In Florida, Jeb had to cut 51 of the 55 prison drug treatment programs to help pay for his halving of the intangible property tax – a tax to which only the best-off Floridians are subject.) The point is: There are now more reasons to think that perhaps 7100 on the Dow a few weeks ago was the bottom. My guess is that it was not, and I would not rush to buy stocks today, 20% higher than they were six weeks ago – especially the big stocks that all the institutions follow. But I fully allow for the possibility that I am wrong. And, more than that, for the wisdom of not trying to ‘time’ the market. If you are young, or youngish, and putting $100 or $1,000 a month into stocks, month in and month out, don’t stop! Over long periods of time, whatever happens short term, you’ll do fine. Should stocks go lower – good! That just means you’ll get them on sale.
Your Feedback (Two Days' Worth) November 7, 2002February 22, 2017 Well, this thing has brought out a lot of passion, understandably. (To the guy who wrote in under the subject heading: ‘Print THIS, you dumb asshole!’ I say: if you include your real name, I will!) Some of you are furious that the Democrats lost, and have clear prescriptions for how we could have won. Others, pleased with the election results, are sick of my ‘whining.’ (It’s always ‘whining.’) Several of you took offense at my line about not ‘getting it,’ pointing out that it was I who had not gotten it. (I had simply said that yesterday’s election was terribly important – surely, if for no other reason than the courts – and that, judging from the tens of millions of eligible voters who chose not to vote, not everyone ‘got this.’ At least, that’s what I meant to say.) Several picked up on the ‘slimeball’ discussion of the last couple of weeks as clear evidence that character matters little to people like me. (They, apparently, would rather sacrifice the Supreme Court for 25 years than, say, vote for a guy who had cheated on his taxes.) And a lot of you were angry that the Democrats failed to articulate a simple, compelling message. Peter Amstein: ‘Regarding the message, here is what I think the 240-word version could be. Now how to distill it to five words? If I figure that out, you will be the very first to know, I promise . . .’ The Dem’s are the party of fairness, of ‘the level playing field.’ The R’s are the party of ‘whatever you can get away with is fine as long as you don’t get caught.’ A level playing field benefits everyone. A field that allows cheating ultimately fails. Look at any country in the world with a lot of graft and corruption: I guarantee you their economy is in the tank. There is a direct correlation between how honest a country’s government is, how ‘well regulated’ its economy is, and how prosperous it is. Without exception. In many third world countries, corruption is just accepted as the way of life and the citizens pay dearly for it. Not that we don’t occasionally have graft and corruption here. We do. But the difference is this: in America, it’s a scandal! We are horrified! We throw the bums out, maybe even put them in jail. Whatever their party. And that is what we must now do. Think of baseball, GW’s favorite sport. You could argue, “baseball is way over regulated – all those umpires – and it has way too many rules.” Let’s get rid of the umps and toss out that thick rule book. Now we’re playing ball! The pitcher is using sandpaper? Who cares! Plus if we don’t have to pay for umpires, the tickets can be cheaper. But of course the game would quickly descend into chaos, and it would be no fun for anyone, fan or player. It is to prevent this chaos that we invented the umpires in the first place! That is the Republican plan for America: fire the umpires, cut the SEC budget, cut the IRS, toss out the rule book, make the tickets cheaper, and damn the consequences. Is that what we really want for this country?’ My wise older brother: ‘People want to hear from people they think they can trust. (Good lawyers know that their personal credibility is their one big asset. Judges and juries don’t like to be manipulated.) Far fewer Minnesota voters agreed with Wellstone than supported him; they elected him to the Senate anyway because they got that he cared about them – the common good – and about his credibility much more than he cared about political advantage, his own * or * his party’s. People dislike both parties these days, dislike most politicians, and mostly loathe politics. That’s because they know politics is supposed to be about the common good but it’s largely about power for power’s sake instead. That’s why most of them refuse – or just can’t be bothered – to vote. And that’s also why, internationally, America as leader is loved and admired but America as hegemon is feared and disliked. ‘I guess we ‘liberals’ can’t run [columnists] Paul Krugman or Tom Friedman for office. Or [West Wing creator] Aaron Sorkin (him, though, we could maybe hire?). Let alone George Washington or FDR. But we can listen to them better as a party and come together a lot better on where America should be going. The only way to do that is to talk to one another with the common good in mind first . . . and private, personal, partisan advantage a distant second.’ Darren McDonald: ‘The time has come for new Democratic leadership. The existing leaders have failed to communicate a message to the core voters. You can’t campaign against a tax cut if you helped pass it. Democratics allowed themselves to be painted in a corner on far too many issues.’ ☞ I agree that we’ve been painted into some corners. I hated the tax bill, and feel strongly that, while we should make the tax cuts permanent for the ‘bottom’ 98% or so, we should freeze the cuts that apply only to the top 1% or 2% until we can afford them. But the Democratic Party is a big tent, and I have to admit of the possibility that some of our folks may actually have believed that, on balance, the tax bill was a good thing. Even if not, the reality is: (a) tax cuts are popular; and (b) at the time, before Jim Jeffords’s switch, we lacked the votes to block this one So, yes, some of our people doubtless chose to make the popular vote rather than risk reelection to vote against something certain to pass anyway. Likewise, many Democrats, while helping to push the administration to go more slowly and carefully, paying more heed to the U.N. – which I think was an important contribution to the process – may at the same time genuinely agree with the Bush administration that the world has become too dangerous to allow Saddam to develop weapons of mass destruction. My own hope is that by talking very tough, we may get inspections without having to attack. Paul: We need to give people some compelling reasons to vote for Democrats and not just ‘me too’ our way through elections. There would have been something honorable about losing as badly as we did if we really offered a clear alternative that had been articulated from the top down. As Paul Begala kept saying last night as we watched the blood bath, ‘You’ve got to stand for something or you fall for everything.” ☞ A few weeks ago I heard Begala arguing passionately that we should call for freezing the tax cut for the top 2% so we could pay for prescription drugs and balance the budget. Our pollster said no. Whenever we allowed the debate to go to taxes, he said – no matter how compelling our position – we lost, because tax talk automatically triggers pro-Republican sentiment. For the most part, I think the Party chose pollster over policy. Tim Russert would ask our candidates whether they favored a freeze for the top 1% . . . I would be screaming YESSSSSSSSSS!!!!!! into the TV . . . and our guys would dance around the answer. Made me nuts. But is it a sin to listen to some of the best pollsters in the country when, as a practical matter, your party cannot possibly freeze the tax cut for the top 1% anyway because the President would veto it? I disagree with those who think this question has an easy answer. Brett Delfino: ‘I preface this by saying that I voted Democrat down the line as a protest against Bush policies. That said, if a majority of voters want to elect people who will continue to enrich me at their and their children’s expense (I am in a high income bracket), then let them. We should try to educate people about the mess that Republican policy is making, but in the end we can’t force votes. The triumph of the Republican party is that they have managed to dupe a large portion of the electorate who will never benefit from their policies into believing that they will. In these voters’ honor, I am thinking of buying a second home and naming it ‘Poor Republican Voter,’ as it is their gift to me.’ Dave: ‘I am bitterly disappointed. I don’t understand. Budget surplus to budget deficit. Tax breaks primarily for the rich. Cleland – a disabled veteran, a hero, a moderate – painted as soft on ‘homeland defense.’ Visigoth judicial candidates waiting in the wings. An economy that is in the tank. Unemployment rising. How did we lose? I’m not getting any younger, but if Lautenberg is ready to keep fighting, so I am I.’ Let’s take tomorrow off. Have a great weekend.
When You Don’t Have Anything Nice to Say . . . November 6, 2002March 25, 2012 There WERE some nice things yesterday — Ed Rendell is Governor of Pennsylvania! Mark Pryor knocked off Tim Hutchinson in Arkansas! — but the main story, of course, is that the right wing of the Republican Party came to control all three branches of our government. The proper response from those of us who are devastated by this, far from giving up or dropping out, I think, is to try harder . . . is to inspire more people to help . . . and is to do a better job of articulating our message. Because the Clinton/Gore vision really *is* more uplifting and really *did* provide better results than either of the Bush visions that bookend it. And we should also stress the positive. For example, here in Florida – despite Governor Jeb Bush’s opposition – a Democratic ballot measure appears to have passed that would limit the terrible overcrowding in our public school classrooms. That’s good news! (Did you have 44 kids in *your* fourth grade class?) Bush told a group of insiders that if this measure passed he would find some “devious way” to thwart it. But unbeknownst to him, a reporter was listening and reported the remark. With luck, that will make it harder for him to thwart the measure after all. It’s not that either of the Bushes dislikes children. It’s just that their first priority is to cut taxes for the best off. Jeb Bush cut Florida’s intangible property tax in half, while leaving the taxes that average people pay untouched. Cutting my intangible property tax in half (from a tiny tax to an even tinier tax) is nice for me, but it worsens Florida’s budget crunch and winds up hurting children. Not one Floridian in 100 knows he did this or sees the connection. (Bush cut the state’s drug treatment budget by about 80%, but blithely claimed during the televised debate to have *raised* it 60% … and the Miami Herald – knowing this – never even called him on it.) We needed to let them know. So much was at stake yesterday. A lot of people “got it” — but, obviously, not enough. I asked my young dental hygienist yesterday afternoon whether she had voted. “Yes!” she said, explaining emphatically: “if you don’t vote, you don’t get to complain.” *She* gets it. Some of the folks on my list with $50 million and $1 billion net worths did not get it, or believed we should “unilaterally disarm” in the soft-money race. I keep reminding myself that it’s their money, not mine. But I will admit that it makes me crazy that I was unable to persuade them to help. But that just means the rest of us will have to try harder. One good way to get a start on 2004 is to go to democrats.org and sign onto our e-mail list.
Turn-Out November 5, 2002March 25, 2012 They say Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana should do pretty well if it doesn’t rain too badly today. And that’s probably true of all our Democratic candidates. When turn-out is high, Democrats win. (Republican candidates tend to have the money. ’60 Minutes’ reported Sunday that Texas Senate candidate Ron Kirk was being outspent five to one by his Republican opponent. But Democrats tend to have the voters, if they can be motivated to go vote.) I mention Louisiana because I am reading Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose, the story of Lewis and Clark. (More accurately, it is being read to me, on my tiny Audible.com MP3 player, as I do my big five-mile walk.) As you will recall, Thomas Jefferson recruited Merriweather Lewis (and Lewis recruited Clark) to explore the Louisiana territory that, in 1803 or so (one of the problems with an audible book is that it’s hard to flip through the pages to recall a fact), Jefferson bought from the French for $15 million, all in. Originally, the purchase was to cover New Orleans only. But it wound up covering all of Louisiana, which seemed to stretch all the way up to Canada (no one knew). It was Lewis and Clark’s assignment to explore that territory up to the headwaters of the Missouri but, more than that, to make their way West all the way to the Pacific – by water insofar as possible – a thing no Americans or Europeans had ever done. They set out without maps, without satellite phones, without sunscreen or bug repellent or a Starbucks around every bend. (Near the end of my own grueling walk, if I am getting too dehydrated, I stop at Starbucks for a grande frappucino to go.) They encountered bears and rapids and native Americans (oh, how we treated the native Americans). They wintered in the Dakotas. And for much of the time, before they had to portage over the Rocky Mountains, they were going upstream. It is a story of astonishing dangers, deprivation, disease and discomfort, and one marvels that Lewis and Clark and their men (and a native American woman named Sacajawea) somehow were able to succeed (the expedition took years) and at the courage and ingenuity and determination they summoned. It reminds me of the decades-earlier words of Abigail Adams that I’m fond of quoting, where she said, ‘Posterity, who are to reap the blessings, will scarcely be able to conceive the hardships and sufferings of their ancestors.’ It contrasts rather starkly with the modern-day citizen who doesn’t vote because it’s raining. Or who hasn’t registered for fear of being called for jury duty. Or who simply hasn’t learned enough of our history to understand where we fit in.
Vote for the Slimeball? November 4, 2002February 22, 2017 Last week, a reader asked whether it made more sense to vote for an upstanding candidate of the opposing party, whose policies you oppose, or for a ‘doofus’ you did not respect but who might give a majority to the party whose policies you favor. I said: when control of the government hangs in the balance, you have to go with the doofus. Magda: ‘You know, I’m with you on a lot of issues, but not this one, my friend. You offer the options of voting for a [slimeball] from your own party or a candidate from the party you oppose. You seem to have forgotten there are other people on the ballot. In most races there are at least three (and frequently more) candidates on the ballot. Years ago, I had my two-party blinders lifted. Since then I have honestly evaluated candidates on the basis of their character, policies and platforms – and not solely on the basis of their party affiliation. To do less surrenders my claim to participation in a representative democracy. Why vote for someone I cannot respect enough to have them represent me?’ ☞ Because otherwise you could get a very bad outcome. Your approach is totally fine if it won’t matter and you want your vote to make a statement – I’d do it, too. But it’s a disastrous thing to do in instances – like tomorrow’s unbelievably close race for control of the House and Senate – where it could matter. The most obvious example of this, although it does not involve a slimeball, was the 2000 presidential race. Those to the left of Al Gore should have voted for him anyway, if they lived in a swing state like Florida. Instead, 97,000 Nader voters elected Bush. There may be a Nader voter out there somewhere who prefers the world according to Bush over what they imagine the world would have been under Gore – but I can’t imagine who he would be, unless it is Ralph himself. And I think he’s rationalizing. MORE ON JEB Surely you know someone who knows someone who votes in Florida. Please send him or her this devastating column from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Or this one from an editorial in Friday’s Palm Beach Post. (‘As a candidate in 1998,’ it begins, ‘Jeb Bush promised Floridians ‘a new kind of politics.’ He has delivered. He and the Republican Party have put out signs that the state is open for business — private business. Never in Florida has there been such a link between politics and policy. Never has an administration had to invent so many defenses of obvious conflicts of interest. Never has money become so institutionalized in Tallahassee.’) Don’t you have a grandmother in Florida? Sure you do. Or your old college roommate surely does. Let’s do this people. We desperately need a regime change in Florida.
Things You May Not Have Known About Jeb Bush November 1, 2002January 23, 2017 But three quick items first: 1. SELL ONE OF OUR LITTLE SPECULATIONS On June 26, I suggested ‘three little speculations.’ One of them, BMRN, was $4.50 or so and closed last night at $6.45. It may (or may not) go higher, but I am no longer comfortable recommending it and have sold most of mine. Better to take a 40% taxable gain than to avoid tax by losing it. The other two little speculations I expect to hold until they make me rich or make a funny column. 2. DIAMONDS Ron Heller: ‘When I got engaged, I offered my wife-to-be a choice: a big diamond, or use those same dollars as part of the down payment on a house. She chose the house, and I knew I’d picked the right woman.’ David Morrison: ‘When Dana Dlott wrote that ‘The diamond business is a classic bubble,’ you could have responded with ‘No, it’s a classic bauble.” 3. SOMETHING GOOD THE BUSH TEAM HAS DONE You may have seen Nightline this past Tuesday describing a $15 million ad campaign the U.S. is doing to reach the Muslim world. It’s a good, modern campaign that shows how well American Muslims are integrated into our society, the positions of power and respect many hold, and so on. I.e.: We like Muslims; please like us. The three American Muslim scholars on with Ted Koppel to critique the ads thought they largely missed the point – it’s not U.S. treatment of American Muslims the Arab world hates us for – but seemed to think they were a good start, if only because it showed the Muslim TV audience that we were trying to reach out and talk to them, and that we care what we think. I hope we build on the campaign, addressing touchier subjects like our support of Israel and our concerns with Iraq. I’d like to see us spend 10 times $15 million on this and – if it seems to be opening any minds – 10 times that. And now: JEB – In Three Acts ACT I. Cut taxes – but only for the best off. It’s a challenge to cut taxes for the rich in Florida, because Florida has no income tax. But when we last left this story, Jeb Bush had found the one tax in Florida that applies only to the best off – the intangible property tax – and chopped it in half. It used to be TWO-tenths of one percent of your stocks and bonds and mutual funds above $100,000 (though not your retirement plan or your savings accounts or savings bonds or checking accounts or Treasuries or municipals or private partnerships or real estate), and Jeb cut it in half, to ONE-tenth of one percent. I doubt there is one Floridian in 50 who even knows about this. I know about it because my tax was cut in half. My first thought was – oh, this is nice! But my next thought was, how can we afford it? What about my friends who teach school down here and tell me how hard it is to have 44 kids in their classroom? They have subsequently both quit and moved to Atlanta. But I don’t care about them nearly so much as I care about the kids. What kind of life are we setting them up for when we throw them into classes of 40 and more? Aren’t kids our most precious resource? Isn’t it more important to invest in them than to nick the growth rate of my (very small) fortune by one-tenth of a percent instead of two? (And of course it’s even less than that, because it does exclude so many things and because it’s deductible against federal tax. So even at two-tenths of one percent it may have effectively been less than one-tenth of one percent. Ah, the burdens we bear!) ACT II. Cut the drug treatment program by 85%. No one doubts Jeb’s compassion for his own daughter’s drug problems. But what about others’ sons and daughters? About a year after I noticed that he had cut my intangible property tax in half, I noticed this headline: The Miami Herald January 27, 2002 FLORIDA SLASHING CARE FOR DRUG ADDICTS By Carol Marbin Miller In a state where nearly a third of all crimes are drug-related, the Department of Corrections has approved a budget cut that will eliminate the bulk of drug treatment among inmates and greatly reduce the state’s program to help drug addicts outside the prison system. The cuts, the Herald reported, were expected to save Florida $13 million a year and would eliminate in-house drug treatment programs at all but four of Florida’s 55 major prisons . . . and reduce by 34% the number of beds available to treat drug addicts at 20 residential treatment programs throughout the state. ACT III. Lie, and say you raised the budget by 60%. It was making me crazy that in interview after interview about his daughter’s re-arrest on drug possession charges, no one asked Jeb why he had cut the drug treatment budget so dramatically. And in last week’s televised debate, no one asked him about this either – but he brought it up (in passing) himself, listing among his great accomplishments for the people of Florida the fact that he had raised the budget for drug treatment/prevention by 60%. My first reaction was – uh, oh. Maybe the Herald got it wrong, or maybe there was such a stink after the Herald report that he did an about face. Or maybe the heartbreak over his daughter led him to restore the budget and then raise it 60% to boot. I started worrying that I had been tarring him unfairly. I decided to do a little reporting. ‘Make no mistake,’ the Herald story had quoted Broward County chief assistant public defender Howard Finkelstein – who himself battled drug addiction 14 years ago – ‘When we get done crunching the numbers . . . human lives will be lost or go unrepaired, and misery will be spread from generation to generation.’ So I called him. Which was it, I asked: Had the budget been slashed 85% or raised 60%? Did he know how this seeming contradiction could possibly be squared? He laughed ruefully – as did the several others I wound up speaking to who confirmed all this – and told me what had happened. Even before the Herald story had come out, the Broward County Public Defender’s office – and all the other such offices in the state, I was told – were instructed to shift 75% of their 110-person payroll, for accounting purposes only, to the line for drug treatment and prevention. Their budget was frozen, not raised; and the 75% of the staff that was ‘moved’ did absolutely nothing different after the move, little or none of which had concerned drug treatment. It was all sham. Now, you expect this sort of thing of Enron or Harken Oil or Halliburton. Cook the books, fool the people. But aren’t those folks, or at least some of those folks, headed to jail? Anybody think Andy Fastow should be the next governor of Florida? I know this is harsh, but isn’t it at least as harsh to eliminate 51 of 55 prison drug treatment programs? Isn’t it harsh to oppose Amendment 9 on Florida’s ballot Tuesday that would mandate smaller class sizes . . . and to be caught by a reporter telling insiders (at a meeting where Jeb didn’t realize a reporter was present) that if it does pass, he would find some ‘devious’ way to keep from implementing it? That was his word – ‘devious.’ I’m sure he meant it in fun, just as the 60% hike in the drug treatment budget probably just seemed like clever, fun politics. But what about the kids? Is it really good government to find a real way to cut taxes for the best off – and only the best off – and then to find a fake way to make it look as if you raised the drug treatment budget or reduced classroom sizes? Is this not lying? I don’t use the term “lie” lightly. I’m not talking about a white lie or a slip of the tongue or a little ol’ fashioned political exaggeration – or concealing some embarrassing personal detail. For all the hoopla the Bush brothers made over Al Gore’s saying he invented the Internet, the fact is (a) HE NEVER SAID IT and (b) what he did say – that he had been its champion in Congress and deserved a lot of credit for its creation – is undisputed. Only most people never learned this. The Bushes had a field day when it turned out, after one of the debates, that Gore hadn’t actually gone to a disaster site with the director of FEMA (which he had done something like 37 times), but in this case had gone with the deputy director – oh, they scoffed, the man is out of control! Who could trust such a man! They scoffed, too, when Gore said their numbers were a trillion-dollar fake – that you couldn’t slash taxes as they proposed and still protect Social Security and balance the budget, as the promised. And even as they were scoffing, they knew he was right, but that that was fine – the idea was to cut taxes for the best off so much that you had to cut government spending. And if kids suffered or the elderly couldn’t afford their medicine or 40-odd million folks would still be left with no health insurance, well . . . well . . . I think they must just not let themselves think about these things. So, in my view, they attacked Gore on silly little things that the Bush team either made up or blew out of all proportion. But what’s silly or little about slashing desperately needed drug treatment while cooking the books in a way to allow you to claim to have raised it 60%? What’s silly about living in a state so poor in education that it threatens to ruin the lives of tens of thousands of innocent kids . . . and planning to find some devious way to avoid reducing classroom sizes if the people vote for it? And of course this is just one slice, the little piece I know. How many other slices are there out there? According to this detailed Village Voice article, Jeb is getting ready to give more than $10 million of the taxpayers’ money to some friends. They paid $4.4 million for a citrus grove two years ago; the trees then developed canker (which should make the grove LESS valuable, no?); and Jeb was getting ready to give them $14.4 million for it. Could this be true? It sure seems to fit a pattern. (Don’t even get me started on the environmental stuff.) Please consider cutting and pasting this column and sending it to everyone you think just might know someone who votes in Florida. The Miami Herald has not made it easy for us by ignoring these stories and endorsing Bush. But the race is very close. Bill McBride is a terrific, honorable man, a former marine, who deserves to be Florida’s governor – not Jeb. Have a great weekend.